The Gold Coast Re-defined - Why it is Australia's Premier Lifestyle Destination - February 2024

By Andrew Bell, Chairman, The Ray White Surfers Paradise Group

The Gold Coast grew from a collection of small townships, established around the mid-1800s, but by the early 1920s it had become not only a great place for Brisbane people to frequent on weekends, but it started the earliest days of tourism for those within driving distance. Tourism led to significant economic growth in the region, and by 1959 the Gold Coast was declared a city. With the arrival from Melbourne of the brilliant marketer and developer, Sir Bruce Small in the late 1950s, and his vision of how the Gold Coast could follow in the steps of Florida’s Miami Beach, saw him turn large swathes of land into the Gold Coast canal estates.

In 1967 Sir Bruce Small was elected Mayor of the Gold Coast on the platform that he would grow the Gold Coast to become Australia’s major resort City, and such triggered phenomenal growth and promotions such as the Meter Maids that put the Gold Coast on the national map, and over the next fifty years saw the Gold Coast indeed stamp itself as the favourite holiday destination for Australians. Phenomenal growth in high-rise developments were built to cater for the demand of people to be as close as possible to the famous beaches that are synonymous with the Gold Coast.

Whilst the population grew in that time from 23,000 to well over 650,000, demonstrating not only that Australians like to holiday here but that many chose to make it home, it wasn’t until the 2018 Commonwealth Games that the city truly transformed from just a holiday destination to what is now regarded as Australia’s lifestyle capital.

Whilst the economy originally was based predominantly on tourism and construction, today it has expanded into multiple pillars such as a leading education centre in Australia with three universities and some of the most premier high schools. A centre for foreign language students. The Gold Coast Health and Knowledge precinct has now seen the Gold Coast become a centre for medical care and indeed has become a centre for medical research, with many new discoveries attributed to the research centres. IT and light manufacturing are also developing an inevitable reputation and its success stories of its economic growth across so many industries means it is becoming a strong employment hub.

But in the lead up to the 2018 Commonwealth Games over $18 billion was injected into the region, ranging from all of the new sporting facilities that needed to be provided, to the creation of the Gold Coast Light Rail, a massive $340 million refurbishment of The Star Casino, $840 million refurbishment of Pacific Fair into one of the best shopping centers in the Southern Hemisphere and a host of other public and private development work that set the platform for the City’s growth going forward.

The city was ready for what was to happen as a result of the 2020 pandemic. When Australians were forced to stay at home, it refocused people on where indeed they wanted to live and the Gold Coast was rapidly seen as the preferred location and as a result of that, a frenzy of migration occurred from not only major cities such a

Sydney and Melbourne but indeed from many parts of Australia. With so many people who migrated to the Gold Coast, they triggered a further wave of migration from their families and friends who got the opportunity to spend time on the Gold Coast for longer stays. This has seen has incredible surge in demand for Gold Coast properties, far outstripping the supply and sparked an unprecedented rise in property values.

Today migrators to the Gold Coast don’t look at the Gold Coast real estate prices purely as a purchase of bricks and mortar, but indeed see it as a huge lifestyle improvement that comes with the result of their real estate purchase.

The Gold Coast has also attracted great interest from foreign investors who also have wanted to enjoy all that the Gold Coast has to offer as a holiday destination. In the 1980s it was the Japanese investment in Gold Coast properties which ended with the downfall of their economies in the early 1990s. This was followed by strong buying interest from other parts of Asia such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. And around the year 2000, the next wave of foreign investment came from the United Arab Emirates, which also started to see a wave of investment from Russians. But the greatest of all time was the significant investment by the Chinese, from around 2010 to 2017 before Government tightening of FIRB requirements, and a strain in relations between Australia and China that saw the end of the Chinese wave of investment.

Today it continues to be a city of great interest to a wide range of investors from the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, India, Indonesia and a range of other Asian cities.

In further articles, we will explore the type of buyers that are driving the Gold Coast city, which suburbs on the Gold Coast have the strongest attraction and the greatest potential for capital growth, how the Gold Coast is handling the housing crisis, what capacity does the Gold Coast have for further growth and how the Gold Coast is handling transport with its huge surge in population growth and what is the outlook for the Gold Coast in 2024 and beyond and much, much more.

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