The landlord betting big on Central Coast offices while everyone else heads for the exit

Darren Foley has spent the past 18 months buying office space that nobody else wanted. His firm, Coastal Commercial Group, now controls four strata office suites on Mann Street in Gosford's central business district and is under contract on a fifth — a 340-square-metre floor plate in a mid-rise on Georgiana Terrace that sat vacant for two years before he made an offer. He paid $1.42 million for it in March 2026, roughly 15 percent below the vendor's original asking price.

That kind of discount tells a story. National investor sentiment toward commercial property has cratered since the Victorian government's 2025 budget hit landlords with a land tax surcharge that accelerated an already visible exodus from Melbourne's market. The ripple has been felt as far north as the Central Coast, where vacancy rates in Gosford's CBD climbed to 18.4 percent in the first quarter of 2026, according to figures published by the Property Council of Australia's NSW division in April. That number, while uncomfortable for established landlords, is precisely what Foley says attracted him.

The contrarian case for Gosford CBD

Foley's theory is straightforward. The Coast's population has grown faster than its commercial stock for three consecutive years. The 2021 Census recorded roughly 340,000 residents across the local government area; independent demographers working for Central Coast Council estimated that figure crossed 365,000 by mid-2025. Workers who relocated during the pandemic years are staying, and a growing cohort of professional services firms — accountants, migration agents, allied health practices — are discovering they can no longer operate from a kitchen table and need proper fitout without Sydney rents.

Coastal Commercial Group's strategy is to acquire, strip back and refit the older B-grade stock that has been bleeding tenants since about 2022, then lease it to small businesses at rents sitting between $280 and $320 per square metre net annually — materially cheaper than equivalent space in Parramatta or Norwest, and roughly half what you'd pay in the Sydney CBD. The Mann Street suites are already tenanted. One went to a migration consultancy in February; a two-partner accounting firm signed a three-year lease in April at $295 per square metre.

The broader context matters here. Australia's appetite for AI data centres is consuming industrial land at a pace that is crowding out logistics and freight operators, pushing some of those businesses to reconsider secondary markets like the Central Coast for operational bases. Meanwhile, Meta's sweeping account purges — triggered by AI impersonation campaigns that hit small creator businesses hard — have rattled the digital-first operators who need physical addresses and face-to-face client relationships more than they once admitted. Real office space, paradoxically, is getting a second look.

What the numbers say — and what comes next

Central Coast Council's draft Local Strategic Planning Statement, released for public comment in May 2026, flags the Gosford waterfront precinct and the Woy Woy town centre as priority commercial activation zones. Council's economic development team has earmarked $4.2 million in its 2026-27 capital works budget for streetscape upgrades along the Gosford foreshore, work scheduled to begin in September. That kind of public investment is exactly the signal that private landlords typically wait for before committing, which is why Foley's willingness to move ahead of it is notable — and, depending on your appetite for risk, either prescient or premature.

The Georgiana Terrace building is scheduled to settle in August. Foley's plan is a $380,000 fitout targeting the health and professional services sector, with leasing to begin in the final quarter of 2026. If vacancy rates in Gosford follow the trajectory that several smaller NSW regional centres experienced 18 to 24 months after comparable infrastructure investment — Wollongong's CBD vacancy fell from 16.1 percent to 11.8 percent between mid-2023 and early 2025 — the timing may prove astute.

For small business owners on the Coast weighing whether to lease or keep working remotely, the practical message from what Foley is doing is blunt: net-effective rents in Gosford are at a generational low right now, landlords are offering fitout contributions and rent-free periods they weren't offering two years ago, and the window for that kind of deal is unlikely to stay open once the foreshore upgrades are complete and the foot traffic numbers improve.