A couple who expected to have a house built on their “perfect” block of land now face being shut out of the property market after the developer allegedly used a legal loophole to jack up the price.

Jamie Pfundstein and Kirk Johnson, who have a baby son, bought the block off the plan for a series of houses at New Beith in Logan, south of Brisbane, for $380,000 in November 2021.

WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Queensland couple lose dream block following sudden price hike.

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She found the “dream” listing while scrolling a real estate website on her phone late one night.

“(I) pretty much got the ball rolling from 10 o’clock that night,” Pfundstein told 7NEWS.

“We were thinking it was going to be our forever home.

“Have our son raised and grow up in it. Have dirt bike tracks and ponies and whatever you want out the back.

“It was the perfect block.”

The couple believed the build process would be straightforward, but claim what followed were a series of purported reasons from the developer for construction to be delayed, including slow council approvals and wet weather.

Without a start to construction, a sunset clause protecting them from the developer tearing up the sale contract lapsed.

Pfundstein said she was “shocked” to receive a letter last week terminating their sale contract, which allowed for either party to pull out of the agreement after the sunset clause lapsed.

The couple alleges the developer offered them the chance to keep the land if they paid an extra $200,000 — otherwise they would terminate the contract.

The couple declined to pay the extra money.

“We think (the developer) stuffed up on the price,” Pfundstein said.

“Because an acre block in Queensland — especially in Greenbank, an up-and-coming suburb — it’s worth more than $380,000.”

The couple had sold their original home to pay for the purchase of the property.

“It’s going to be hard now (to get back into market), because everything’s rising. We don’t have much equity as we did when we sold the house,” Johnson said.

“It’s going to make it very difficult to get our foot back in the door.”

The developer, whom 7NEWS.com.au is choosing not to name, would not answer specific questions about the couple’s situation, nor would they respond to concerns from other buyers at the New Beith development that a similar situation could happen to them.

Pfundstein accused them of showing “no compassion, no remorse” toward the couple.

Premier responds

Asked about Pfundstein and Johnson’s situation, and the loophole that allowed their contract to be cancelled, Queensland Premier Steven Miles sympathised with the couple but said developers should not be forced into bankruptcy.

“It’s really disappointing to hear that developers, some developers, are treating their customers in that way. It’s a real shame that that has happened,” he said on Tuesday.

“What we have seen, though, is a dramatic escalation of construction costs.

“In some cases, requiring developers to build to the costs they quoted three, four, five years ago would require them to go bankrupt.

“That’s an unfortunate consequence of the kind of price escalation that we’ve seen.

“We can’t force developers to go bankrupt. You can’t force them to build when constructions costs have escalated so dramatically.”