Unmasking Mermaid Beach: Decoding the 22.3% Plunge in Median Price Amidst a Real Estate Boom

Is Mermaid Beach the Gold Coast’s ultimate master of disguise? 

Always on the podium as one of the city’s most expensive suburbs but recent PropTrack data suggests its value has plunged 22.3% over the past 12 months to a median of $2.525 million.

How on earth does one of Queensland’s most sought after postcodes drop 22 per cent in the middle of a real estate boom?

The devil is always in the details.

Unlike most suburbs, Mermaid Beach is just about split 50/50 with units and houses – and the houses, well let’s call them for what they are, mansions, are certainly in the prestige category.

So what’s going on?

The suburb hit its peak in February 2023 with a median price of $3.35 million on the back of some rare, marquee sales on the beachfront in the order of $25 million.

Fast forward 12 months and five new high rise apartment towers have settled in the area, flooding the market with circa 500 units which are selling for well below the Mermaid Beach median.

That, coupled with a slight pause in the sale of those $25 million homes, and the median, on paper, gives the impression of the market crash in the suburb.

Not true.

If you exclude those two outliers – the beachfront megamansions and new to market apartments – Mermaid Beach is still well and truly on the cook.

Properties in the one to six million dollar range are continuing to see 10% to 30% annual growth, as local and interstate buyers alike cram to secure their piece of paradise.

This is headlined by the sale of 19 Cronulla Avenue by Ray White Burleigh Group, which set a new Mermaid Beach record for a single dry block (non beachfront) when it sold at auction for $5.925 million, 18 months after the vendors bought it themselves for $4.4 million.

That sale was achieved by RWBG agent Dan Donovan, who also sold 38 Venice Street, a bona fide knockdown for a whopping $2.8 million, up from $2.3 million less than three years ago.

“Demand is still at an all time high, and supply is relatively low in Mermaid Beach,” he says.

“Hedges Avenue is absolute beachfront so it’s basically its own micro market.

“We haven’t seen any of those really big sales lately, certainly not in the past 12 months, and that’s why that median house price has fallen so much in that period; but if you take those marquee sales out of the equation, the suburb is red hot.

“19 Cronulla and 38 Venice are proof of that.

Just 22 homes have settled at Mermaid Beach in the past 12 months, and 188 units.

Compare that to Surfers Paradise which has a similar median at $2.76 million but saw the sale of 71 homes and a whopping 1300 units.

Oh, and the median price has trickled down just 3.1% – not the allegedly catastrophic 22% as seen in Mermaid Beach.

So much for a “spiralling beachside market”.