Speculators aplenty in Southport's high-rise property developments: HTW

Properties around the Gold Coast region of Southport have been earmarked for concern due to supply levels and sale volumes for new apartments, according to Herron Todd White.

Herron Todd White's September Month in Review noted a streamlined PDA approval process has led to a larger volume of approvals being given for large yield high-rise buildings over the last two to three years.

The review stated while development to date has focused on smaller projects, where demand appears to be adequately absorbing supply, there is a degree of concern to the overall volume of approved stock that potentially could be brought to the market if a number of the approvals were acted on. 

"There are a large number of 100 plus apartment highrise projects approved within the Southport PDA area and that a proportion of these have been obtained by ‘speculators’, with the intent to on sell the approved site, likely to overseas interests," it noted.

"To date, we have seen only limited local developers or lending institutions show an appetite for these larger scale developments in Southport, and the reality is that while a larger potential supply of apartments is approved for Southport, a number of the proposals, may in fact, not be acted on in the current development cycle.

"In the improved market, there has been a noticeable increase in the number of proposed fringe residential apartment projects in areas which are traditionally regarded as more suburban low density housing locations."