Where it stands, as at 2026-07-25
16
sourced transactions
8 verified, 8 reported
A$3.3m to A$30m
range of disclosed prices
7 suburbs, 2022-03 to 2026-05
1
rates deliberately withheld
area basis unstated or disputed
7
suburbs represented
a public slice of a largely private market
No average sale price is published. Record sales are reported in the press and ordinary resales are not, so an average taken from public sources would describe the records rather than the market. The range and the individual sales are shown instead.
What the evidence shows
Four findings, and what each one rests on.
Each finding below is assembled from the sourced transactions and the published claims, and links to the page carrying them. Where a figure is proprietary or commissioned rather than official, it says so. Nothing here is inferred beyond what those rows support.
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01
The top of this market keeps printing a larger number.
Three sales in the sample each exceeded every disclosed sale before it: A$20m in 2022, A$24m in 2023, A$30m in 2026. Between one and nine sales are disclosed in any given year here, which is far too thin to call a trend, and 2024's highest disclosed sale is only A$6m. What can be said is narrower and still worth saying. Each of those three reset the ceiling of what a Gold Coast apartment had been shown to fetch.
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02
Delivery, not demand, is the binding constraint.
JLL reported 90 Gold Coast apartment completions in the March quarter of 2026 and described construction as still heavily delayed. A June 2026 Property Council and Urbis pipeline study classified around 60 per cent of apartments due for completion in 2028 and 2029 as at moderate or high risk of delay or withdrawal.
Research-house and commissioned figures, not an official completion register.
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03
The demand behind it is population, not speculation.
In the year ended December 2025, Queensland recorded net interstate migration of 16,528 people and net overseas migration of 54,604. For the financial year ended June 2025 the figures were 21,595 and 55,743. New South Wales remained the largest interstate source. Gold Coast Airport handled more than 6.2 million passengers in calendar 2025, with international passenger numbers up 14 per cent on 2024.
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04
Policy pushes offshore capital into new stock specifically.
From 1 April 2025 to 30 June 2029, foreign persons are generally prohibited from purchasing established dwellings in Australia. Limited approval pathways remain, including qualifying redevelopment that adds at least twenty dwellings, commercial-scale housing uses and certain employee housing. Queensland applies an additional foreign acquirer duty of 8 per cent on relevant acquisitions of residential land by foreign persons, including applicable companies and trusts. The 8 per cent rate took effect on 1 July 2024, replacing 7 per cent. A foreign buyer who wants Gold Coast exposure is therefore steered toward new and off-plan product, which is the segment already waiting on delayed delivery.
Taken together: supply that cannot arrive on time, demand underwritten by people moving here, and a rule that sends offshore money to the one segment already running late. That is upward pressure at the top of the market, and the three step-ups above are what it has looked like so far.
What this does not establish is where any individual residence should be priced. Sixteen disclosed sales across four years cannot do that, and no average of them is published here for the same reason. How the sample was built, and what it cannot show.
Contents
- 01
The transactions
16 sourced Gold Coast prestige apartment sales, each with its own sources, floor-area basis and check date. 15 carry a rate per square metre.
- 02
The pipeline
8 sourced projects, who is developing them, and which of the transactions belong to each.
- 03
Who is buying
Buyer cohorts and demand drivers. 6 sourced claims, each labelled with its geography and, where the data is proprietary, whose it is.
- 04
Risks and constraints
Foreign acquirer duty, the established-dwelling restriction, planning and height, coastal exposure and delivery risk, sourced to the bodies that set them.
- 05
Methodology
How the sample was built, what it cannot show, the claims withdrawn from it, and the work still outstanding.