Our client was looking to acquire a freehold commercial property with both income and development upside. The brief had a clear strategic angle: they wanted something with genuine long-term potential. Not a pure development site that would sit vacant and drain holding costs, but a working asset that generated income now while offering genuine upside through future leasing or redevelopment of underutilised space. The Sunshine Coast hinterland was the preferred location, where land availability was tightening and population growth was creating sustained demand for large-format commercial and industrial space.
We targeted Nambour — a town undergoing a genuine reinvention. Once the hub of Queensland's sugar industry, Nambour had spent years in transition, but a wave of infrastructure investment, population growth from the broader Sunshine Coast expansion, and its status as a regional service centre were changing the town's trajectory. The train station, major hospital, council chambers, and proximity to the Bruce Highway made it a natural catchment for commercial and industrial operators priced out of coastal locations. We specifically looked for multi-title sites with Specialised Centre zoning — a zone designed for large-format retail, showroom, trade, and industrial uses. The key was finding a property where the existing income covered holding costs, but the land holding was large enough and zoned flexibly enough to unlock additional value over time through leasing vacant areas or staged development.
We identified a prominent CBD-fringe site in Nambour comprising nearly 5,900m² of freehold land across four separate titles. The property had 64 metres of street frontage on a main feeder road into the town centre, with neighbours including national retailers and major service providers. The improvements included four freestanding buildings totalling approximately 1,776m² — a large showroom and warehouse of around 1,250m², a four-bay workshop, an administration building, and a smaller showroom with storage. Approximately 70% of the site was leased to an established community retail operator at $256,280 gross per annum, leaving roughly 1,500m² of land area available for immediate leasing or future development.
The asking price was $3.4 million. We negotiated the acquisition down to $3.2 million — a significant saving that improved the entry yield and gave the client a stronger equity position from settlement. The four-title structure was particularly attractive: it provides the flexibility to sell individual lots, develop in stages, or hold the entire parcel depending on market conditions and the client's strategy over time.
The client now holds a substantial freehold land position in a town experiencing real momentum. The existing income covers outgoings comfortably, while the vacant portion of the site represents genuine upside — either through new leases to trade, showroom, or industrial tenants, or through staged development under the Specialised Centre zoning which permits building heights up to 12 metres. The four separate titles give the client maximum flexibility as Nambour's commercial market continues to tighten. This is the ideal blend: a working asset that generates income today, sitting on a strategically zoned land bank that grows in value as the Sunshine Coast's population expands inland. The $200,000 negotiated saving on the purchase price meant the client started ahead from day one.
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