What are buyers saying about buying off the plan property on the Gold Coast in 2024?

The Gold Coast off the plan apartment market is expected to have another strong year, anecdotal feedback from local agents paired with data from Australia’s largest dedicated off the plan property website suggests.

Research collected by MatterFact, the new data product from Urban.com.au who have hundreds of thousands of prospective off the plan apartment buyers visit their platform each month, shows there was consistent enquiry volumes throughout 2022 and 2023 on the Gold Coast, despite the much-publicized lack of available stock for buyers to choose from.

Urban.com.au CEO Mike Bird says, “he was surprised when analysing the numbers given the lack of new projects being launched to the market”.

Urban.com.au surveyed its user base in Gold Coast, digging deeper into what the barriers are for them to purchase.

The overarching response was a lack of trust in the developer or the builder. Over two-thirds of respondents said they didn’t know if they could trust the two biggest stakeholders in the project. 

The next two biggest barriers were also both tied to the builder. 60 per cent of respondents also said a barrier to purchase was the uncertainty of move-in timelines, while half of the respondents said they were concerned with what the build quality would be like come completion.

“These are fairly common concerns statewide when it comes to buying an off-the-plan apartment,” Bird says, however, he adds that the concern is more exacerbated in the Gold Coast than anywhere else in the country.

“There needs to be full confidence now in every stakeholder in the project. The first or second question from the prospective buyer isn’t related at all to the apartment they’re purchasing, it’s related to the developer and the builder. 

The latest research was presented the Colliers Residential developers’ lunch on the Gold Coast in late February.  David Higgins Director of Residential who hosts the function, says the chronic undersupply on the Gold Coast that has been getting worse for years and with a drop in confidence in builders and developers unable to deliver the much-needed supply only adds to the problem.

"It seems the lack of trust of builder-developer is the number one current issue with off the plan buyers, in fact, it’s almost now secondary to be sold on the apartment configuration or the price, the buyer needs to be sold on the fact the project will be built, and to a high quality.”

“The positive for the market is that Builders and Developers who can demonstrate certainty, and have earned the trust of the buyer, will be supported by strong buyer ongoing demand from both the end user and investors”. Higgins added.

Less than a third of respondents said a barrier to entry was finding value for money in the market, which is incredibly surprising given the Gold Coast’s boom in recent years.

Despite there being very little to choose from in terms of marketed projects on the Gold Coast, only a quarter of respondents said they were struggling to find an apartment that fit their needs.

Bird said that where in other states price and product mix are huge barriers to entry, that doesn’t seem to be the issue in the Gold Coast.

"It’s purely related to developer and builder confidence. If the market can find a way to fix that, and more projects can get out of the ground, then the market could pop again.”