Somewhere between boom and bust is a holding pattern where the Gold Coast property market sits right now.

The release of CoreLogic’s home value index confirmed house prices had fallen in the big smoke markets of Sydney and Melbourne, by 0.2 and 0.1 per cent respectively, for the first time since the pandemic.

Nationwide, REA Group’s PropTrack Home Price Index put growth at just 0.34 per cent in March – slower than any other month since May 2020.

Whispers of a downturn swirling alongside looming interest rate rises grew louder, while economists finally said it: the boom is over.

Not in Queensland though.

The home value index showed further gains of two per cent in March, with Eliza Owens, CoreLogic’s head of residential research, saying the Sunshine State, “continued to show stellar growth performance”.

But how much longer can it last?

Property prices in many suburbs have spiked again this year. For houses, median prices increased by up to around 10 per cent; and up to 14.3 per cent for the strongest unit market – Oxenford.

But even those heady quarterly gains across the Gold Coast’s suburbs were mostly well down on what we’ve seen through 2021.

And that’s not a bad thing.

Local real estate industry sources concede a softening of buyer activity and inquiry.

Less homes are going to auction, while some have sold just before they were due to go under the hammer – perhaps to offset an expected buzzkill come the big day.

Large family homes on an elevated block command the biggest prices.

But the consequence of this quieter landscape should be a plateauing of house prices on the Gold Coast, rather than steep decline.

Underpinning this is the consensus that our local real estate market has been undervalued for some years, while the city’s liveability has leaped ahead at the same time.

And while homeowners may love to see their golden goose in the shape of equity grow ever fatter, housing affordability is the bigger issue gripping our market.

Going back to the home value index, the usual suspects – Palm Beach, Burleigh Heads, Mermaid Beach, Surfers Paradise – weren’t our front runners this quarter.

Instead, it was Pacific Pines, the northern suburb where hundreds of investors parked their money into overpriced new developments a decade or so ago, with minimal return since.

Young families flocked there for cheap rentals, and a strong community spirit flourished.

Now, those investors have done their time and are selling out for a profit perhaps even they couldn’t have imagined. Not to new investors, but to owner-occupiers priced out of the Coast’s more central suburbs. House prices in Pacific Pines rose 11.3 per cent in the three months to March, hitting a median of $902,180.

Source: realestate.com.au/news/