THE Gold Coast and Tweed Coast region is the most expensive regional land market in the country.

The latest Housing Industry Australia HIA-rpdata.com Residential Land Report showed for the first time on record that Richmond-Tweed ranked as having the most-expensive regional land.

At $265,000 our region leads second-placed Sunshine Coast at $262,000 and the Gold Coast third at $250,000.

The Illawarra in NSW climbed up to rank fourth-most-expensive at $210,000 and fifth-most-expensive was Barwon in Victoria on $192,000.

On a per-square-metre basis, the Gold Coast is the most-expensive at $387 a square metre.

HIA Executive Director of the Gold Coast and Northern Rivers Colin Buttenshaw said this was good news for locals.

“The Gold Coast and Tweed Coast is currently a good place to sell new-home land,” Mr Buttenshaw told the Daily News.

“Housing industry members have been experiencing a shortage of good home-building land for some years, especially on the southern end of the Gold Coast and in the border region.”

The report said that less land being available is behind the high prices and this means less people are building new homes.

“The inability to secure land at an affordable rate is locking more and more would-be new-home buyers out of new-home ownership and redirecting them into the established housing and rental markets.”

Director of First National Real Estate at The Pines, Burleigh and Palm Beach David Hamilton said the existing home market has always been the popular choice for first-home buyers.

“First-home buyers traditionally go for existing properties, in particular units,” Mr Hamilton said.

“Units are in the $350,000 to $400,000 market.

"The only place on the Gold Coast you'll get a house and land for that price is Coomera.”

While the report highlighted the downturn in the number of new-build starts, Mr Buttenshaw said if there is land it just has to be put onto the market.

“HIA understands the massive costs for developers to bring land to market and we support and encourage them to release new land in these difficult times.”

The least-expensive land market according to the report was the northern region of South Australia at $69,000 followed by Murray Lands ($73,750) and south-east SA ($78,500).