The Australia Day weekend showed that the Gold Coast property market is slowly picking up again after years of subdued conditions, with the cheaper end leading the recovery. On Sunday, 58% of more than 100 properties put to auction by The Ray White Surfers Paradise Group in front of more than 1000 people at the Gold Coast Turf Club were sold on or before the day. The auction, known as the Event, was the most successful in the 22 years it has been held, and had a clearance rate above last year's when only 50 per cent of the homes sold on the day. Most properties sold close to reserve prices.

"Any clearance rate over 50 per cent generally reflects price growth; we have a spring in our step and we have every reason to be confident about what's going to happen in the marketplace," Ray White Surfers Paradise Group chief executive Andrew Bell told The Australian Financial Review. "Twenty-two years ago there wouldn't have been more than 30 people here." According to the Real Estate Institute of Queensland, house sales increased 7 per cent in the September quarter, to 1316 properties.

Despite the success of the weekend auction, Bell said there was still some room for upswing in the higher-end of the Gold Coast property market. "The prestige market is really tight at the moment. People aren't selling. For some of the top end sellers they're still not confident they'd get back the prices they paid during the peak of the market." The biggest sale on the day was a three-bedroom penthouse at the Nirvana By the Sea, which sold for $3.755 million.