David Young, the developer envisioning a Gold Coast Trump Tower, had $7.96 cash to his name and was signing himself into financial oblivion.
It was 2010 and his debts were crippling. That included entrepreneurial bling: $560,000 owed on four loans for Ferraris, a BMW 750i and a Porsche Boxster.
They were among $32.6 million in liabilities listed in his own bankruptcy filing, revealed today by the ABC.
Most of that debt came from a property financier. But even the Australian Taxation Office was owed $434,000.
The few assets Mr Young said he retained, such as forested land near central Queensland’s coastal Yeppoon and another BMW X5, were worth horribly less than associated debts.
Mr Young declared bankruptcy owing hundreds of thousands on luxury cars. (Supplied)
Mr Young had become financially exposed, like many other developers, when the global financial crisis smashed property-project values.
Now he is roaring ahead. The business world’s spotlight fixated last month when Mr Young’s Altus Property Group secured an extraordinary achievement: a branding and management deal with the Trump Organization for a 340-metre tall, six-star, $1.5 billion hotel-apartment complex in Surfers Paradise.
He even was photographed shaking hands with Eric Trump, second son of US President Donald Trump.
Mr Young met with Trump Organization Executive Vice President Eric Trump. (Supplied: Altus Property Group)
Business opportunities fire-hosed in. “My confidence is high, taking over 20,000 EOI’s [sic.] in 8 hours,” he wrote on LinkedIn beneath that photograph.
It’s a spectacular start but many hurdles remain, from a difficult construction phase to winning over investors given his past calamities, some of which the ABC reveals today.
Still, the ABC also confirmed his Altus has secured millions from an established lender for other works, which are progressing on a mantra of quality in central Queensland.
Mr Young declined to answer many questions about his tower plans, saying they are “private matters”.Â
Setbacks and a long Trump plan
Now 60, with resplendent grey hair and beard, Mr Young was raised in Yeppoon, his parents saving so he could board at Brisbane Grammar School.Â
“Despite my somewhat poor academic record [Grammar] taught me enough to do a deal with The Trump Organization!” he wrote.
He worked in mobile DJ-ing, nightclubs, property development. But in 1991, brewer Castlemaine Perkins bankrupted Mr Young and another man.
During his career, he’s noted his ups and some downs, in everything from LinkedIn posts to company announcements.
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Mr Young wrote the bankruptcy stemmed from a project he had viewed as high-risk and left years earlier. Upon learning of the bankruptcy, “I repaid my debt, and it was annulled”.
By the mid-2000s, he became a Gold Coast developer, and in his words, a cliché, “partying too often and even driving a Ferrari”.
He had projects near Yeppoon and the Gold Coast, associated with controversial fund manager LM Investment.
Mr Young’s vision for a Trump Tower in Australia stretches back decades. (Supplied: Altus Property Group)
The Trump venture was hatched in 2007. Mr Young wrote he cold-called Donald’s daughter Ivanka Trump: “I intend to build Australia’s finest tourism property at Surfers Paradise, and I want it to be a Trump resort.”
But that deal and others sector-wide foundered as the GFC petrified lenders and property valuations crashed.
He and his company Young Land Corporation went bust in 2010.
Regulatory filings indicate creditors in his bankruptcy estate did not get their money back — but Mr Young added to the ABC he believes he has “repaid all my debts to small businesses and contractors” involved in the bankruptcy.Â
“I am proud of my record of honouring debts and will continue to do so,” he said.
As for his company, Mr Young wrote that in hindsight, it carried too much debt. “Before the GFC struck, the asset valuations were strong and so was our cash-flow”.
But liquidators, appointed a year after trading ceased, also claimed Mr Young was largely “uncontactable” save for an initial discussion. The liquidators also alleged he failed to provide a required financial report.
Mr Young has publicly disputed that he was uncontactable and, while not citing specific instances, told the ABCÂ some records were inaccurate and he had asked regulators to correct them.Â
He kept working in development, writing online his “troubleshooter” consultancy taught him sector lessons. He also completed his later bankruptcy in the typical three years. But by 2021, his life was spiralling dangerously awry.
Trump Tower for Gold Coast a magnet for the wealthy
Court records show he pleaded guilty three times to drink driving on the Gold and Sunshine Coasts in 2020 and 2021, twice without a driver’s licence. He blew a 0.160 reading — more than triple the legal limit — a 0.156 reading and a 0.099 reading.
Police once found him at a bottle shop car park, sitting with the engine running, “glazed eyes and a dishevelled appearance”. He had drunk a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. It was 2pm.
Mr Young’s lawyer argued in 2020 his client was a gravely ill “chronic alcoholic”, suffering cirrhosis of the liver.
“He needs to sort out his life,” his lawyer told court.
Rent also went unpaid in 2022 on a four-bedroom Gold Coast home he leased; his lawyers arguing he had been sick and “unable to manage his own financial affairs” then.
The real estate agency successfully sued, in his absence, for $9319.60. Mr Young’s lawyers years later told the tribunal he had repaid the money and, with consent, wanted the debt judgement overturned because of its “adverse effects”.
Mr Young told ABC he had consumed alcohol excessively previously “as happens to a lot of people who ‘work hard, play hard’.”
“To remove all doubt and to be healthier, I have stopped drinking again at all,” he said.
David Young’s property group Altus is developing a residential development in Gracemere, near Rockhampton. (Supplied)
Mr Young since last year has spoken confidently in corporate videos about property plans and self-deprecatingly wrote he was no longer a cliché, driving a demure Toyota HiAce van.
And he’s shown endeavour to revive a once-shipwrecked deal. Mr Young wrote of flying to Florida to speak with organization executive Eric Trump (“very bright and unexpectedly down-to-earth”) and viewing the “high standard” of three Trump properties.
Those ventures contrast with the four development projects for hundreds of house and land packages in Moree in northern NSW and near Rockhampton that his Altus is creating.
Sienna is one of the developments by the Altus Group in Gracemere, near Rockhampton. (Supplied: Altus Group)
Land blocks are being flattened and suburban cul de sacs created in the first Rockhampton project. Homes are selling from $674,000 with sales videos showing designs with big windows and elegant furniture.
But the company’s birth was rocky — Mr Young and an initial director fell out bitterly.
That director had provided accounting services and later would allege he took out a second $215,000 mortgage against his own home to start the development venture.
But Mr Young sued the director’s accountancy when it allegedly refused to hand over property company documents.
Correspondence filed in the Supreme Court shows the director had claimed Altus had not repaid the loan and outstanding accountancy bills exceeding $165,000.Â
But Mr Young and his lawyers maintained “genuinely due fees” had been paid, and the loan represented the director’s cost for purchasing shares.
The court ordered the accountancy hand over company documents, and Mr Young maintained he had won all legal matters and received an apology letter.
A Trumpian tower
The Trump Tower proposal is currently an empty block across the road from Surfers Paradise’s beautiful sand and waves. Several hundred metres northward is the decadence of Cavill Avenue’s nightlife.
The 91-storey resort’s promotional video thumps to a techno-music soundtrack, showing a glass-walled tower, beach firepits and a mid-deck DJ-spinning pool bar, crowned by a billboard scrolling “TRUMP” in letters so large they can be seen from the ocean.
The site of the proposed Trump Tower. (ABC Gold Coast: Dominic Cansdale)
The site is registered to a company whose major shareholders are Macau casino boss Keong Kuong Loi’s family. Mr Young posted he had “acquired the site”, would amend the existing development approval and early works commence in “four months”.
It’ll be a monster project. Sunland Group founder Soheil Abedian developed the 322-metre Q1 building on the Gold Coast in 2005 and described immense challenges to ABC Radio.
There was digging 50 metres to the ocean floor to stabilise the structure, adapting for semi-cyclonic winds, ensuring windows don’t fall out. “If you ask me today … would you do that again, with everything I witness, I would say I will pass it to next generation to do another tall building,” he quipped.
The Gold Coast Trump Tower will be a mammoth project. (ABC News: Peter Mullins)
Mr Abedian added “building a land and house is quite a different chapter in the development industry than building a high rise”.
Not that Mr Young is dissuaded. He wrote on LinkedIn that questions about his high-rise experience were “not really relevant”.
“A developer contracts to people who have built high-rise, project managers, civil engineers, and a host of other specialists. That is what I have done,” he wrote.
He did not answer who he had hired and the post, like several others related to the project, has been erased.
Then there’s finance. One senior lending figure thought Mr Young would not get past the front door of any major Australian bank with this project, given his track record.
Still, searches by the ABC found Altus’s initial Rockhampton project has attracted funding from established mortgage fund Trilogy.
Trilogy told the ABC it had provided a $9.3 million loan, but had been neither asked, nor was currently planning on, financing the Trump project.
Sunland Group founder Soheil Abedian developed the 322-metre Q1 building on the Gold Coast in 2005 (Steve Keen, ABC News.)
Mr Young is eschewing banks anyway. The Trump project “is entirely funded” with debt and equity by Singapore, Hong Kong, UAE and US private investors, he said.
Prominent Sydney financier David Kingston, investment firm K Capital’s founder, told the ABC that investors in such a project would examine the developer’s record.
Mr Kingston, an investor in hotel and tourism ventures, said he did not know Mr Young but his lack of big high-rise experience and past financial difficulties would make attracting money difficult.
Two other thorns existed, Mr Kingston indicated. Firstly, spiralling construction costs meant building and financing such a project would be increasingly tough. Secondly, the Trump brand was far less popular in Australia than the US or Middle East, making selling the tower’s luxurious apartments — starting at $5 million — more challenging.
Donald Trump’s son, Eric, says the tower would be the family’s first project in Australia.Â
Sections of the business community are supporting the proposal. They’re applauding Mr Young’s grit in securing a deal over 20 years. That’s counterweighed by protest petitions or social-media trolls hounding Altus’s ties to President Trump’s brand.
Mr Young argues against politicising the project and is adamant, in a post praising Eric Trump, the tower will proceed.
“We’re going to build a six-star resort,” he wrote. “One that makes Queensland proud.”
That post has also been deleted.
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