Remember when a T-bone steak at a restaurant cost $1.80 and a block of land was $18,000?

Admittedly it was back in the ’70s. Bernie Elsey’s Beachcomber in the main street at Coolangatta had an all-you-could-eat smorgasbord. Eat the salad off the top of the steak, go back for a refill, then finish off with dessert.

The Coffs Harbour Hotel had a whole snapper for the same price and it was so large it would hang over both ends of the plate.

Today on the Sunshine Coast you can expect to pay $20-$30 for a steak and $200,000-$300,000 for land. See the similarity?

Property analyst Michael Matusik can. And he made special mention of it at the Urban Development Institute of Australia (UDIA) Sunshine Coast annual general meeting.

He pointed to locations such as Bargara and Yeppoon. Yet we can see the same here on the Sunshine Coast – at Golden Beach, Moffat Beach and Coolum Beach for instance. They were places you headed for a hamburger or a feed of fish and chips. Not any more. Streetside dining, café lattes, rack of lamb followed by tiramisu.

And the prices of land have kept pace. In the ’80s Golden Beach was the home of fibro beach houses. You were just as likely to find chamferboard cottages on 600sq m at Moffat. Coolum even offered low-set brick and tile beach houses. All for about $70,000. Today the starting point is around $400,000.

Queensland will continue to be in demand as a place to live, Mr Matusik told the record number of guests at the UDIA breakfast meeting. There was a time when it was too expensive to buy a house, so the young generation chose to rent.

“It will not be long before that is reversed,’’ he said. “We won’t be able to afford to rent and it will be better to buy.’’

New homes throughout Australia, particularly Queensland, are in strong under-supply. And it’s likely to get worse, leading to growth in both prices and rentals.

The present market is about positioning with most people staying in one place longer, being less likely to move due to rising prices and the tightness of the rental market.

Established house prices are expected to grow about 6-8% this year and 10-12% in 2009. Yet rents could rise about 30-35% in south-east Queensland in the next three years.

The key ingredients to price growth are proximity to saltwater, changing demographics, provision of infrastructure and school enrolments.

“See where people are paying more in restaurants,” Mr Matusik said, “and you will see where prices are going up.’’