Beach suburb Bilinga next to Gold Coast airport has crazy price rise of $355,000
You are more likely to have been to Bilinga than heard of it.
Bilinga is the runway – quite literally – for the Gold Coast airport. Most of the suburb is taken up by the airport. Anyone who has ever landed in or taken off from the Gold Coast Airport has been to Bilinga, whether they realise it or not.
Just one narrow strip of housing forms the only residential part of the suburb, but it’s a narrow strip that packs a breathtakingly spectacular punch. Straddling the absolute beachfront for little more than a kilometre, it is a tiny, tucked-away strip of the southern Gold Coast that sat, barely touched save for its modest oceanfront shacks and dinky brick units, for the best part of 25 years.
But prices in Bilinga have gone crazy. So much so, that its unit prices have outstripped far more famous locations like Bondi Beach, Vaucluse and Coogee in Sydney.
The median unit price in Bilinga has jumped by $355,000 in the past 12 months alone, according to Domain’s latest House Price Report. A 19 per cent rise puts the median price at $1,580,500; that’s also more expensive than units in Byron Bay.
Unit prices have grown by $860,455 in the past five years.
The pandemic boom, which saw prices explode across the Gold Coast, has well and truly reached suburbs like Bilinga – airport be damned.
“Bilinga was always undervalued … largely because of the airport and airplane noise,” says Tony Holland of McGrath Tugun. “As the market has changed, people have accepted that.
“There’s the M1 [highway] behind us and the airport, but we step straight out onto the sand. That’s the trade-off. There are actually not a lot of places where you can step straight out onto the sand like that.
“And because Bilinga is literally right next to the airport – rather than at either end of it – we don’t get as much airplane noise as other suburbs around here.”
Property records show that 10 years ago, units were still selling for less than $300,000. But the median unit price is now being pushed up by new developments: whole-floor luxury apartments on the beachfront with multi-million price tags.
Ed Cherry of Coastal Palm Beach is selling a $6.5 million beachfront penthouse with a private pool terrace.
The new units sell for north of $4 million, he says, adding that not only are these hefty sales lifting Bilinga’s median unit price, they are also changing the face of the suburb.
“You’ve still got those guys who bought the beachfront units for $180,000 20 years ago,” he says. “They’re still there, and you’ve got the old stories in any area. Bilinga is always going to have a bit of that village feel because it is a small suburb.
“But people simply walk along the path along the oceanfront here, they see the real estate and go ‘wow’. There’s so much money being poured into the area.”
There are still surfer types living in Bilinga, Holland says, but even the surfers are richer these days.
“You used to have a young surfer type. [The suburb] had an edge to it. That has changed dramatically. Rent has gone up – there is sort of a prestige … the value has changed the feel. The surfer vibe is still there; it’s just the surfers who are there on the beachfront now are surfers who have money.”
Gavin Keith of RBR Property Consultants is selling a two-bedroom, two-bathroom unit on the beachfront in a small block of units.
It’s listed as offers over $1.7 million and features uninterrupted views of the Pacific Ocean. The path out the front for pedestrians and cyclists goes all the way to Coolangatta. The owners, who’ve had the unit for 10 years, paid about $700,000, so their property has more than doubled in value.
Keith says the majority of his buyers – and there are many – are from Brisbane, and they’re keen for a weekender in a quieter part of the Gold Coast. Many, he says, are surfers from the Baby Boomer era, wanting a bolthole reminiscent of their glory days. in the 1960s and ’70s.
“Some people buy at Bilinga because it doesn’t have the restaurants and the cafes that Burleigh and Palm Beach does,” he says.
“The buyers who are coming here are the people who want the village feel; they like the fact that it’s smaller, it’s quieter, and they don’t want to bump into everyone when they go for a walk.
“They love the old-school Gold Coast, and that’s what they’re in Bilinga for. Some of the suburb is changing but the character is still there. It’s pretty special here.”
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