Why Aperture, Broadbeach apartments are attracting the local and interstate buyer: Five minutes with Little Projects Director Leighton Pyke

"We wanted to put a slightly different spin on what the Gold Coast usually offers - giving it an injection of an outside perspective,".
Why Aperture, Broadbeach apartments are attracting the local and interstate buyer: Five minutes with Little Projects Director Leighton Pyke
One of Aperture's luxury bedrooms and the view over the beach. Image supplied
Joel Robinson November 18, 2021

The Melbourne-based Little Projects has sought to meet the ever-growing demand for high-end apartments at their latest Gold Coast apartment development, Aperture.

The Broadbeach tower will be home to just 29 apartments across its 35 levels when it is completed in mid-2023, with buyers already showing interest due to the 200 sqm plus of living space across each apartment.

Leighton Pyke, director at Little Projects, said that after the sell-out success of Signature around the corner, the team wanted to create something a little different.

"Signature was obviously higher density with 245 apartments, a project of that scale takes considerably longer to move," Pyke said.

"We saw there was a good level of demand for that larger product and wanted to take something to the high-end owner-occupier market quickly to try and meet that demand."

Pyke and the Little Projects team engaged the Melbourne-based architect, Elenberg Fraser, to create the 120 metre tower, having worked with them previously on the design phase of a development of around 1000 apartments in Fisher​mans Bend in Melbourne.

It's only the second time the architecture firm has designed an apartment project on the Gold Coast. The only other is the mixed-use hotel and apartment development Mondrian at Burleigh Heads, currently in market.

"We wanted to put a slightly different spin on what the Gold Coast usually offers - giving it an injection of an outside perspective," Pyke says. 

"Their involvement certainly sets us apart, potentially bringing a few new ideas to the Gold Coast."

Pyke says there's already been a big wave of Sydney residents enquiring on Aperture.

With house prices rocketing in the Harbour capital, some downsizers and retirees are happy to take advantage of current market conditions and cash in on their longtime family homes and buy something smaller as a city base, freeing up money to secure a more expensive holiday home that they will spend a significant amount of time at.

Pyke however added that the same sentiment is felt with the local market, where there's also windfall house sales.

House prices in Broadbeach - Burleigh experienced the highest annual growth in the Gold Coast in the 12 months to August 2021, with gains of over 38 per cent, according to data from the data-driven buyer’s agency, InvestorKit.

Apartments in the same area grew by 15.7 per cent over the same period.

"It's speeding up that transition to downsize, which is why we are seeing huge levels of owner-occupiers wanting to buy something that might be toward that higher price point."

Pyke says the team have a firm belief in the longevity of the Gold Coast apartment market, and are working towards securing more development sites heading in to 2022.

Joel Robinson

Joel Robinson is the Editor in Chief at Urban.com.au, managing Urban's editorial team and creating the largest news cycle for the off the plan property market in the country. Joel has been writing about residential real estate for nearly a decade, following a degree in Business Management with a major in Journalism at Leeds Beckett University in England. He specializes in off the plan apartments, and has a particular interest in the development application process for new projects.

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