星娛樂集團、遠東發展有限公司、周大福集團聯合投資的黃金海岸公寓，一星期內已出售25%
Hong Kong-listed Far East Consortium and its partners the Star Entertainment Group and Hong Kong investor Chow Tai Fook Enterprises have quietly sold about 100 properties as they soft-launched their Gold Coast apartments at Jupiters Integrated Resort.
The joint venture came together last year to build a $400 million, 53-storey, 200-metre, 4.5-star hotel and apartment tower at the complex, which will include 423 apartments and 700 new hotel rooms.
It released pricing for the apartments – the Star Entertainment Group’s first mixed-use tower – on Wednesday before launching the project in Australia and elsewhere, including Hong Kong and Singapore, on Thursday.
Prices for apartments at the tower designed by Cottee Parker range from $467,000 for one-bedroom homes to $668,500 for two-bedroom units. Their sizes range from 54 square metres to 109 sq m.
The homes sold well because they were not built and sold as luxury apartments, unlike those built in the 1980s, Far East Consortium executive director Craig Williams said.
“It’s different to when the Japanese built luxury apartments in the ’80s. Then, many Japanese would go down to the Gold Coast, play golf and fly back,” he said.
“And many of the properties were highly leveraged. This tower is being developed by a prudent developers and many of the dwellings are sold to the middle class in Australia and Asia.”
In the 1980s Japanese developers fuelled a real estate boom on the coast, and it became the No.1 destination for Japanese tourists.
But the 1990s recession in Japan led to a retreat of developers and a glut of luxury apartments on the coast.
Mr Williams said this time there was “far more strength underpinning the coast, and the trend of prices was upwards”.
While the joint venture was offering average-priced products, other more luxury towers have emerged on the coast, including Chinese developer Dalian Wanda’s Jewel project.