Featuring a swathe of top-end waterfront high rises, the development is also expected to offer the emerging trend of ‘build-to-rent’ apartments, rather than the traditional ‘build to own’ model of units available to prospective residents or investors.

Local developer Cru Collective, in partnership with ASX-listed CVC Limited, picked up the Burleigh Waters site at Lake Orr near Bond University, for $45 million against competition from developers around the country and across south-east Asia.

The masterplan development, with 600m of lakeside waterfrontage and smack in the middle of the Gold Coast’s ‘golden triangle’ of Burleigh Heads, Broadbeach and Robina, is estimated to be worth more than $1.5 billion and aims to provide a small middle to long-term release valve on the south-east’s housing crunch.

CVC Limited Executive Chairman Craig Treasure said, in conjunction with Cru Collective, the plot would be turned into a multi-use live, work, play precinct.

Cru Collective Managing Director Chris Bolger said preliminary plans included residential, retirement and retail offerings including a market square and childcare.

“In the midst of record levels of apartment demand and low rental vacancy rates, we’re eager to create this masterplan precinct which will deliver targeted housing and amenity in a prime corridor of the Gold Coast,” Bolger said.

So tight is the development market on the Gold Coast that the site is billed as the last of its size to be offered within the city.

With land supply a major issue, a previous housing development in the highly sought-after Burleigh area made headlines when it went to a ballot.
In a first for the Gold Coast, desperate buyers went into a draw so they could secure one of 61 blocks of land in the Burleigh Heads housing development offered late last year.

Sellers of the latest Burleigh site, Colliers and CBRE, said development approvals had been granted for the Lake Orr precinct.

CBRE Managing Director Mark Witheriff said the potential build-to-rent offering was key to addressing the crisis in rental accommodation.

Already a popular phenomenon overseas and now growing rapidly in Australia, build-to-rent complexes are designed and constructed by a developer who retains ownership of the building when it’s complete. The developer then rents out the apartments, while also managing the complex.

“One of the real issues the city has is currently a shortage of rental accommodation. While this site in the short term won’t take care of that, in the long term it will be a real opportunity to get significant accommodation in the market that is really centrally located,” Witheriff said.

“That is one of the real significant benefits of the offering.”