Warning That Gold Coast Could Soon Be "Land-Locked"

The Gold Coast could become ‘land locked’ within the next five years unless a major shortfall in land supply is addressed with the release of more developable land, according to the city’s largest property marketing group Oliver Hume.

New research by Oliver Hume showed there was only 1900ha of developable land, or approximately 20,000 dwellings, left currently zoned to be developed in the Gold Coast LGA.

Excluding land that is too steep to be developed takes the figures back to approximately 13,000 lots.

“The property industry, Gold Coast City Council and the State Government all need to do more to address the shortfall before the impact on affordability becomes more acute,” Oliver Hume Queensland Joint Managing Director Brinton Keath said.

“With an average of 1,720 lots sold on the Gold Coast per annum we are looking at the situation where the entire city will be completely out of land available for housing in about 7.5 years,” he said.

“Australia’s 6th largest city will be essentially land locked because it has completely run out of developable land.”

“When ones considers that it will may take as a minimum 3–4 years for studies and approvals to be complete, 7.5 years is critically low amount of time before we reach this dire stage. "Broadbeach-based Oliver Hume is one Queensland’s largest property services group and completed more than 1,500 sales in 2015.

Mr Keath said the situation could get much worse if the Gold Coast experienced a boom similar to 2003 when there were 3,256 lots sold in the Gold Coast LGA.

“The market is heating up, and there is no reason that this level of sales may not occur in the next year or two. If this happens, the 7.5 years turns in to less than 5 years overnight.”

To highlight how much this land is needed, as of December 2015, OH research shows that there were only 221 lots available for sale within Australia’s 6th largest city of 600,000 people.

“It’s a ridiculously low level and is only continuing to push land prices up and up, making the city unaffordable for young families, which is the predominant population group of the city,” Mr Keath said.

The Gold Coast land is some of the most expensive in all of South-Eastern Queensland LGA’s, with the Gold Coast LGA established house price moving over $500,000 for the first time in 2015.

“This shows how unaffordable the city has become due to this lack of action in releasing more land.

The Oliver Hume research showed that as at December 2015, there were 1,403 lots under production.

“Again if we continue to produce 1,400 per annum for the next 5 years, the 13,000 lots will be reduced to nothing in less than 5 years and the city will be completely land locked,” he said.