Agents look back on summers past with nostalgia for cheap beachfront property

When veteran Noosa real estate agent Peter Butt looks at the modest Sandpiper residential and retail block on the beachfront in

Hastings Street

, he becomes nostalgic about earlier days at the Queensland resort. 

Butt, co-principal of Richardson & Wrench Noosa, first came to Noosa on holiday 33 years ago, staying in a cheap one-bedroom flat at the Sandpiper. He never returned home to the eastern suburbs of Sydney. 

“I looked at the emerald green sea for the first time and saw waves breaking at the point – I used to be a mad surfer – and said to myself, ‘My God, I’ve found the Garden of Eden’.” 

Butt didn’t stay in the cheapest accommodation in

Hastings Street

. That distinction belonged to the camping area and caravan park, known as The Woods. “You could stay in The Woods for $50 a week then,” he says. 

From a location viewpoint, The Woods was the best place to stay in town. It had a double waterfront with the ocean on one side and the river on the other. And you could dine out on a Betty’s Burger for a $1. 

Fast forward to the present. 

Even a street protest – surely a one-off for Noosa – failed to stop the bulldozing of The Woods in the ‘70s. And the old Sandpiper is about to be demolished.

 

From 2013, a new Sandpiper (pictured above) will occupy the prized site, comprising three luxury full-floor apartments and a boutique facing the street. Richardson & Wrench sold the two lower units off the plan to one buyer in July for $14 million. And the penthouse is for sale at $9.5 million – by far the most expensive property on its books.

 

And this year, $50 will buy little more than a decent meal in

Hastings Street

but not even put a dent in your accommodation bill. The most expensive rent being collected by Richardson & Wrench this Christmas is $19,500 a week for a four-bedroom beachfront house (pictured above) in Belmore Terrace, Sunshine Beach. It’s an $8 milion to $10-million property.

Butt says that although each of the 260 holiday rentals on his books is let between December 23 and January 17, rents have been discounted this year. “And there are still some great deals either side of the Christmas period.” 

There goes the neighbourhood

When David Edwards, licensee of LJ Hooker Palm Beach, began to sell real estate in Palm Beach 25 years ago, he remembers a “thriving community where people lived full time. Along the commercial stretch of

Barrenjoey Road

, there was a butcher, barber, chemist and petrol station. 

“Now you have real estate agents, coffee shops and restaurants,” Edwards says with some regret. And the population has become much more transient. 

Despite the stratospheric rents paid for high-end Palm Beach properties, Edwards says that on the non-water side of

Barrenjoey Road

facing Pittwater, it is still possible to rent a place for $1,500 to $1,800 over Christmas. “But on the other side of the road, you can spend $13,000, $15,000 and $18,000 a week.” And for houses facing the ocean, the dollars just escalate.

 {yoogallery src=[images/stories/september16kalula]}

Kalua on

Ocean Road (pictured above) 

 holds the record for the top Christmas rent for Palm Beach, renting in past years for $38,000 to $45,000 a week to the likes of Nicole Kidman, James Murdoch and John Cleese. The plantation-style house, owned by businessman Ian Joye, is currently on LJ Hooker’s website for $40,000 a week. However, Edwards says the Joye family is actually staying there over Christmas, and he believes some rental may be involved over this period. 

For Christmas 2011, life is a little tougher in rental paradise. “Our top rental this year is $25,000,” says Edwards. “There are probably about 20 properties in the $25,000-plus category and we have secured rentals on less than a handful.” 

Average rents a week for Palm Beach this year are $6,000 to $7,000 – down from $8,000 to $9,000. It seems that both owners and tenants are being more careful with their money. 

“In previous years, the bookings were two weeks or longer,” says Edwards. “This year, one week seems to be the more favoured tenancy. 

“The owners are being more frugal, not travelling overseas as much and are using their residences at Milsons Point apartment.” 

And at the top end, owners tend not to cut rents to meet the market. “These are wealthy clients who don’t need to lease,” Edwards emphasises. “Some say, ‘If I am not going to get a good rate, we’ll leave it empty or use it ourselves’.” 

Upmarket fibro

When letting agent and landlord Christine Lewis bought her fibro beach house 10 years ago, she set about to recreate the settings of her childhood holidays – albeit in a more upmarket way. 

Lewis, proprietor of www.lovemelovemydog.com.au – a booking agency for pet-friendly beach houses and owner of a beachfront rental property – used to spend every Christmas from the mid-50s at her grandparents’ fibro cottage at Surfers Paradise. 

“My grandfather would pick me up from the station in his Ford Prefect [a model that hasn’t been made for 50 years].” Her grandparents have long died and their little house has been demolished “take make way for a flash development”. 

Although Lewis’s website lists 2,500 pet-friend properties throughout Australia, the heart of her business is unquestionably Culburra on the NSW south coast. Culburra properties on her books rent from $209 to $1,000 a night. And this Christmas, the most expensive house is renting for $7,000 a week.

Her own property, On the Beach, is rented over Christmas for $4,500 a week. Not bad for a fibro house, even though it’s right on the beach, cost more than $1 million and has about everything that opens and closes – for dogs and humans. 

“It’s probably politically incorrect,” Lewis says. “But I am one of those 1950s babies who isn’t scared of fibro or bindis.” 

It seems that Culburra doesn’t attract the celebrities of the fame of Nicole Kidman or John Cleese. However a regular tenant is Dr Katrina Warren, the TV vet from Harry’s Practice. And in pet-friendly circles, that’s true celebrity. 

*Author’s note

Michael Laurence is a long-time observer of Australia’s beach culture, particularly at Palm Beach. He learned to ride a surfboard at Kiddies’ Corner on the northern end of the beach – across the road from the pricey  Kalua, stored his surfboard next door under Willeroon – the long demolished 1920s Ocean Road house then owned by the Forsyth family (owners of Dymocks bookshops), and once interviewed Billy Connolly as the comedian came in from the surf.