Central Equity's Palmera tower on the Gold Coast tops $400m in sales

Central Equity said this week that its Palmera Residences tower on the Gold Coast has passed $400 million in sales since launch. Multiplex is building the $1 billion, 52-storey tower at Northcliffe, on Garfield Terrace between Surfers Paradise and Broadbeach.

For South-East Queensland developers and agents, the result is a signal that buyers at the top of the market are paying for delivery certainty. A tier-one builder on site is now doing much of the selling.

Central Equity director Karl Kutner put the result down to a mix of location, product quality and delivery certainty. “Surpassing $400 million in sales since launch is a significant milestone,” Kutner said.

Having a builder actively working the site, rather than still pre-selling, has swayed buyers, Kutner said. Elsewhere on the Gold Coast, he said rising costs, labour shortages and financing hurdles have kept other projects stalled, leaving buyers wary of that risk.

Why it matters

Central Equity pushed ahead with construction earlier this year and appointed Multiplex to build it. The sales followed. That is the reverse of the order many Gold Coast towers have been stuck in, waiting on presales before a builder starts work.

For other developers on the coast, Palmera suggests premium buyers will commit to a tower they can see rising. For builders, it shows the value a developer now places on a contractor’s name when it markets a project.

The project was also re-cut for those buyers. The Urban Developer reports the yield was scaled back from 486 units to 339 larger apartments. Business News Australia puts the count at 347. No primary record was available to settle the difference, so both figures are reported here as each outlet gave them.

Kutner said the buyer pool is a mix of people planning to live in their apartment, those chasing a holiday base, and others moving to the region permanently, drawn from both South-East Queensland and interstate. He told The Urban Developer that visible construction progress has given purchasers the confidence to commit, pointing to Central Equity’s four-decade delivery history and Multiplex’s standing as a builder.

The numbers

Sales have passed $400 million on a project Central Equity values at $1 billion. About 60 per cent of the apartments have sold. The unsold stock, including penthouses, spans a $2.95 million to $8.95 million price band.

The 52-storey tower is designed around two pools, a 20-metre lap pool and a magnesium pool, along with a sauna, a yoga studio, a gym and a resident lounge.

Central Equity is a Melbourne-based developer. It says it has delivered more than 85 residential developments and 10,000 apartments over four decades.

What’s next

The milestone was first reported by The Urban Developer and Business News Australia. Multiplex continues building while Central Equity sells the remaining 40 per cent or so of the stack. Kutner said the company’s priority remained delivering a project that exceeds purchaser expectations. Central Equity has not released a completion date for Palmera.

Palmera is one of several large Gold Coast towers in construction at once. Hutchinson’s $180 million Bassar Avva tower at Broadbeach also began building this month.