Spring shock: Once-modest beach town just hit record home sale

Ray White Maroochydore sold The Lorient Penthouse at 801/88 Duporth Avenue, for $9,000,000.

A once-laid-back beach town, now a booming coastal hotspot, has just had a shock wake-up call after a penthouse mortgagee sale shattered its home price records.

Snapped up in just 26 days, the prestige riverfront residence drew 80 enquiries, 49 inspections and four written offers before a local business identity sealed the deal.

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The stunning sale is a record for the luxury market in Maroochydore.

The last time the penthouse sold was off the plan for $7.4m one and a half years ago.

Nearby Mooloolaba has an $11m penthouse sale from 2021 for a property twice the size which took two years to sell.

Experts believe the sale is proof Maroochydore on the Sunshine Coast is now a blue-chip coastal hotspot, a shift driven by a 56 per cent surge in median unit prices since the pandemic to $775,000 and an 82 per cent rise in house prices to $1.1519m.

The $9m price of Lorient Penthouse at 801/88 Duporth Avenue was a massive $1.6m more than it sold for off-the-plan a year and half ago ($7.4m).

The price was $2m shy of the Mooloolaba record shattered in 2021 when the 11th floor Sea Pearl apartment at 1101/87 Mooloolaba Esplanade sold for $11m.

Among the key differences were that the Mooloolaba property had languished on the market for two years priced at $15m before landing its record $11m price, and it was also almost double the size of the recent Maroochydore penthouse – 1165 sq m vs 572 sq m respectively.

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Luxury buyers can’t get stock available fast enough, agents say.

The penthouse has four bedrooms, four bathrooms, and four car spaces.

The penthouse is 572 sq m, almost half the size of Mooloolaba’s 2021 $11m record penthouse sale.

Ray White Maroochydore saw its new record sale price cementing the area’s status as a blue-chip coastal market, with principal Dan Sowden labelling it “a new benchmark for Maroochydore and underscores the depth of demand for irreplaceable, owner-occupier apartments on the Sunshine Coast”.

“When a property combines true scarcity with genuine scale and craftsmanship, the market recognises it – and competes decisively,” he said.

Lead agent Niall Molloy said “we even received calls from buyers who simply saw us at this tightly held building and asked if we had an apartment coming to market”.

“Demand for properties of this calibre is extraordinarily strong and growing.”

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