Building a home on the Gold Coast is at its cheapest in more than five years, as builders begin slashing prices to keep themselves working.
Peter Spencer, a director with quantity surveyors Rider Levett Bucknall, said the dearth of domestic building projects on the Coast had made it one of the best times in memory to build a home.
"Builders are out there discounting now," said Mr Spencer. "Now is certainly the time to build a house."
Darren Barlow, the director of housing with Master Builders Queensland, backed Mr Spencer's view, saying building cost rises had lagged behind inflation and wages for the second quarter in a row -- a first since 2003.
"Affordability is starting to creep back in the market," said Mr Barlow. "The Gold Coast has had a real reduction in activity for six to eight months now and because of that you are getting a lot of people price discounting, or offering extras ... there's an awful lot of that going on the Gold Coast."
Mr Spencer said the building market for projects below $10 million began to slow in mid-2008 and gained momentum in September when news broke of the collapse of parts of the Raptis empire.
"The head contractors on projects had a look at their workloads and saw they were finishing off more jobs than were in the pipeline," said Mr Spencer. "They all saw there were not enough jobs for them and so began buying jobs to keep their workforce going ... the only way they can win jobs is to lower the price."
The Bulletin understands one prestige Gold Coast building firm that would usually have 10 projects on its books, for example, was working on just two homes.
While Mr Barlow said the migration of builders to other parts of the state had been happening for some time, anecdotally many builders had moved in recent months, since the September crunch.
The average cost of a four-bedroom, two-bathroom home of 200sqm was $281,010 in the August quarter, according to Master Builders Queensland's figures.