12:00a.m. 14th October 2008

| By Damian Bathersby

Forget the stock market crash or high interest rates, buyers are scrambling to part with millions of dollars for prestige properties on the Sunshine Coast.

While blue-chip homes in some parts of the Gold Coast have reportedly lost almost half their value, real estate agents on the Sunshine Coast say their biggest worry is keeping up with demand.

“Prestige properties are in such demand that my biggest problem is getting stock, not selling it,” said Susan Musgrove of Henzells Prestige Properties in Caloundra.

“I would love to have more to sell because once you’ve got the stock, there are buyers there.”

It is a lament echoed by other agents who say blue-chip properties do not exist in the same numbers on the Sunshine Coast.

So when one does come on to the market, it doesn’t last long.

“We are so different to the Gold Coast in that it is spread out – there are so many waterfront developments down there that buyers have a lot to choose from,” said Mark Unkel of PRDnationwide Elite at Kawana.

“The buyers are in the box seat down there but up here it’s different because we are geographically a small area and there is no more waterfront ... what we have is all there will ever be.”

Mr Unkel said properties such as the penthouse of Mooloolaba’s Cilento building were attracting strong interest, even with price tags of more than $2 million.

For Susan Musgrove, a three-bedroom sub-penthouse in The Observatory building at Kings Beach sold for $1.01 million on the weekend, hot on the heels of the $1.5 million sale of a penthouse in nearby Montego.

“I had people queueing up for them, so there is still plenty of money,’’ she said.

At Noosa, Olivier Miller of Laguna Real Estate agreed a scarcity of blue chip properties had kept demand high.

“The market has softened about 5% on last year but there have been two significant sales on Noosa Parade, both of them for between $5.5 million and $6 million, a sale at Little Cove for $4.5 million, and of course several sales in Noosa Waters for between $1.5 million and $3 million.

“So we are holding our own.”

And it’s not all about waterfront homes.

Lynda Sherwell of Ray White Buderim said demand was strong for prestige homes on the mountain – again because of scarcity.

“There is a rarity factor of good high quality product for sale here,” she said. “There is not a lot of property on the market and when they do come on they attract a lot of attention.”

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