The conversation about the southern Gold Coast usually starts with residential. Record house prices, interstate migration, lifestyle-driven demand. All of that is real, and we have covered it in detail. But the story running underneath the residential headlines is, in many ways, more telling: commercial property across the central and southern Gold Coast corridor, from Burleigh through Varsity Lakes and down to the NSW border, is attracting capital at a pace that the data is only beginning to reflect.
Lacey West Commercial operates across this corridor daily. We see the leasing enquiries, the owner-occupier competition and the yield compression firsthand. This e-news sets out what is driving commercial property demand across the five precincts we know best: Burleigh Heads and Burleigh Waters, Varsity Lakes, Palm Beach, Currumbin and Coolangatta.
The macro picture: supply constrained, demand structural
The Gold Coast’s commercial and industrial property market is one of South East Queensland’s most supply constrained. Industrial vacancy across the Gold Coast sits well below the national average, with minimal serviced industrial land releases and strong hold positions from existing owners limiting turnover. Office vacancy on the Gold Coast hovers around 6 to 6.5 per cent, one of the lowest readings of any Australian city and well below Brisbane’s roughly 10 per cent.
That tightness is not cyclical. Three structural forces are at work.
First, the Gold Coast added more than 15,000 new residents in 2024, predominantly high-income interstate arrivals from New South Wales and Victoria. Queensland has sustained net interstate inflows averaging above 30,000 people per year since 2022, and South East Queensland absorbs the majority. Those people need services, medical facilities, food and beverage outlets, trade premises and professional offices. Every residential arrival generates a downstream commercial demand signal.
Second, construction costs have risen about 30 per cent over the past three years, according to the Queensland Government’s independent review of Gold Coast Light Rail Stage 4, and labour shortages across the state continue to constrain the development pipeline. New commercial supply is not keeping pace with demand. Commercial development on the Gold Coast is sitting at seven-year lows.
Third, the Brisbane 2032 Olympics infrastructure pipeline (estimated at above $7 billion across transport, venues and urban renewal) is pulling construction employment, logistics demand and tourism investment into the region. Gold Coast is a co-host city, with venues confirmed at Southport (a new 12,000 to 15,000-seat arena), Labrador (hockey centre upgrade) and Royal Pines (satellite athlete village that converts to residential housing post-Games). The preparation spend is real and it extends through 2032.
Burleigh Heads and Burleigh Waters: the lifestyle-commercial flywheel
Burleigh is our core market. We conduct about 80 per cent of our business within the Greater Burleigh precinct, and the commercial dynamics here mirror what we see in residential: constrained supply meeting genuine, broad-based demand.
The greater Burleigh area carries almost $5 billion worth of residential, commercial and infrastructure projects in the pipeline, with over $687 million conservatively estimated for residential and commercial projects alone. Burleigh Heads will see about $113.2 million of new projects commencing in 2026, but these will deliver only 123 units/apartments and 21 townhouses. The commercial component is similarly constrained.
Three precincts drive commercial activity in Burleigh. James Street remains the anchor, a lifestyle retail and hospitality strip where tenancy demand consistently outstrips supply. West Burleigh Road carries a mix of light industrial, trade services and medical tenancies, while Kortum Drive has matured into a sought-after childcare, logistics and small-warehouse precinct (the 98-100 Kortum Drive childcare investment sold for $7.2 million in June 2025 at a 4.59 per cent net yield, demonstrating the pricing buyers will pay for income-secured assets in this postcode).
Burleigh Waters, a few streets inland from the beachfront, has seen about 99 per cent median house price growth over five years, and the commercial follow-on is visible. Medical, allied health and professional services tenancies are expanding, driven by the same population base that pushed residential medians to around $1.6 million.
The Gold Coast Light Rail Stage 3 extension from Broadbeach South to Burleigh Heads completed its first full alignment tram test run in May 2026, with all eight stations largely finished. When services begin, Burleigh gains a direct transit connection to Broadbeach, Surfers Paradise, Southport and the heavy rail interchange at Helensvale. That connectivity upgrade changes the commercial catchment for every retail and hospitality operator on James Street and West Burleigh Road.
Varsity Lakes: the health, education and logistics node
Varsity Lakes sits at a different point on the commercial spectrum. Proximity to Bond University, the Robina Town Centre catchment, and a mature health precinct along Varsity Parade and Lake Orr Drive gives this suburb a commercial tenant mix weighted towards medical, education and professional services.
The Gold Coast Medical Precinct at 191 Varsity Parade anchors a cluster of specialist, GP and allied health tenancies. The Lakeside 1 building at 1 Lake Orr Drive (about 6,059 square metres of office area leased to a mix of medical and professional tenants) previously transacted at $25.4 million, giving some indication of the asset values in play.
The suburb also carries an industrial and trade-services component. Varsity Lakes has pockets of low-impact industry zoning that attract owner-occupiers in trades, logistics and small manufacturing. These strata units are selling rather than leasing, a pattern visible across the Gold Coast as businesses lock in premises against rising rents.
The completed $1.5 billion M1 Pacific Motorway upgrade between Varsity Lakes and Tugun has improved accessibility significantly, reducing congestion along the 10-kilometre stretch and making the suburbs south of Varsity Lakes more accessible to both residents and commercial operators.
Palm Beach to Currumbin: the retail and trade-services corridor
Palm Beach carries a dual identity. The beachside strip is a high-profile lifestyle retail precinct where cafes, boutiques and wellness operators compete for tenancies. The inland blocks, particularly around the Nineteenth Avenue and Currumbin Creek Road corridor, support a quieter trade-services and light-industrial market.
Retail continues to show strength in lifestyle-based strips on the Gold Coast, and Palm Beach is one of the precincts drawing both local and tourism-based spending. The short-stay rental market, driven by Airbnb and holiday-let demand, supports hospitality and food-and-beverage tenants at occupancy rates that most operators outside the coastal strip cannot match.
Currumbin and Currumbin Waters represent some of the southern Gold Coast’s most tightly held industrial precincts. Average yields in smaller industrial pockets like Currumbin and Burleigh Heads sit around five per cent, reflecting both the scarcity of stock and the quality of tenants. Rare sites attract intense competition. A 2,660-square-metre corner site at 9 Queensbury Avenue, Currumbin Waters, with dual street frontage and Low Impact Industry zoning, offers a sense of the development potential that buyers are chasing in these pockets.
What connects Palm Beach and Currumbin commercially is the same force driving Burleigh: population growth generating demand for services, medical, trades and hospitality, set against a zoning and land-supply environment that cannot expand to meet it.
Coolangatta and the border precinct: the airport economy and what comes next
Coolangatta sits at the southern terminus of the Gold Coast, straddling the NSW border and anchored by Gold Coast Airport. The airport precinct is a commercial market in its own right, with landholdings at Border Park and Wollemi Place providing businesses with space in an established industrial estate adjacent to the terminal.
Southern Cross University, Rydges Gold Coast Airport Hotel, Airport Central and the Wollemi Place industrial estate already form a functioning commercial node. The airport’s master plan is oriented towards health, education and lifestyle-adjacent business, a tenant mix that aligns with the demographic arriving in the corridor.
Coolangatta’s residential market posted 10.8 per cent annual house price growth in Q4 2025 (median $1,330,000) and 10.4 per cent for units (median $900,000), according to PRD Research. Weekly house rents sit at $1,085 with a vacancy rate of 1.4 per cent. That population pressure feeds commercial tenancy demand directly, particularly for medical, professional services and convenience retail.
The cancellation of Gold Coast Light Rail Stage 4 (the planned 13-kilometre extension from Burleigh Heads to Coolangatta via the airport) in September 2025 removed one future transport catalyst. The Queensland Government cited strong community opposition, uncertain financial estimates and construction costs that had risen about 30 per cent in three years. In its place, direct bus service enhancements with minor infrastructure upgrades will serve the southern corridor ahead of the 2032 Games, with a broader regional transport study to follow.
For commercial operators, the practical consequence is that the southern corridor’s transport connectivity will improve incrementally rather than transformatively. That changes the timeline for certain asset classes (transit-oriented retail, for instance) but does not change the underlying demand equation. Population growth, a functioning airport economy and a structurally tight rental market continue to underpin commercial tenancy demand regardless of the rail outcome.
What we are seeing on the ground
Across all five precincts, three patterns repeat.
Owner-occupiers are outbidding investors. Trades businesses, medical practices and professional services firms are purchasing premises rather than leasing, locking in occupancy costs while rents continue to rise. Strata industrial units in Burleigh, Varsity Lakes and Currumbin are selling rapidly, often to buyers who have been leasing in the same precinct and know the area well.
Yields are compressing. The 98-100 Kortum Drive childcare sale at 4.59 per cent net and industrial yields around five per cent in Currumbin reflect a market where buyers accept lower returns for the security of southern Gold Coast occupancy, constrained supply and long-term capital growth.
The tenant mix is diversifying. Five years ago, the southern corridor’s commercial tenancies were dominated by retail and trade. Today, allied health, specialist medical, co-working, wellness and technology tenancies are expanding across every precinct from Burleigh to Coolangatta. That diversification reduces concentration risk and reflects the genuine economic broadening of the Gold Coast economy, less dependent on Brisbane, more self-sufficient in health, IT and education.
A note on what separates local knowledge from headline data
Most commercial property commentary about the Gold Coast treats the city as a single market. It is not. The dynamics at Southport or Robina bear little resemblance to what we see in Burleigh or Palm Beach. Vacancy, yield and tenant demand vary meaningfully by precinct, by street and by asset class.
Lacey West Commercial’s advantage is that we operate in this corridor every day. Our team knows which landlords are considering a sale before it reaches the market. The tenant movements, expansions and contractions, are visible to us in real time. So is where the infrastructure spend is landing and where it is not. That is the kind of local intelligence that matters when the market is tight and the margin between a good outcome and a missed opportunity is narrow.
If you own commercial property across the Burleigh, Varsity Lakes, Palm Beach, Currumbin or Coolangatta corridor and are considering your options, or if you are looking to acquire in these precincts, contact our team for a confidential conversation. We are here to help you make the most of what this market is offering.