SURFERS HOLDOUT SELLS UP
LAST FAMILY HOME AMID TOWERS
THE last occupied house on Surfers Paradise Esplanade – dwarfed by neighbouring towers – is up for auction.
Former Canberra-based commercial property owner Peter Batley is selling 32 The Esplanade, nestled between the The Sands and Grosvenor towers, a short walk from 77-level Soul and Cavill Mall.
The July 29 auction comes four years after he bought the former four-unit Driftwood apartment block and spent $400,000 turning it into a seven-bedroom, six-bathroom home with nine car parks.
The three-level property was built in 1965 and Mr Batley said it offered a rare opportunity.
“There’ll never be another chance for a person to buy a house on The Esplanade,” he said.
Mr Batley had considered putting up a 22-storey luxury tower with an apartment per floor and capped by a threelevel penthouse, spending $96,000 on preliminary drawings.
“I started these drawings for a Development Approval because I wanted to borrow against this property to buy commercial.
“The problem I had was, I was asset rich but not income rich,” he said.
“Continuing the DA was expensive for me. I decided a few weeks ago to sell so I could buy a normal house for my daughter Sabrina, with a yard and pool.”
He bought the first Driftwood unit in 2013 from 105year-old Elva Wootton, who had owned it for more than 40 years. He quickly bought the other three.
The only other freestanding house on the street has already been emptied to make way for Banyan Tree’s proposed hotel development.
Amir Mian, principal of Prestige Property Agents, said Driftwood sat on a 433sq m site that could be used for luxury apartments or for a boutique hotel.
“What you have today is a property where owners could live in the whole house or solely on the top floor, using the ground floor for visiting family members or guests.
“They would have the comfort of knowing that down the track a developer might knock on the door and make them a tempting offer.”
The last sale of a development site on The Esplanade was the February purchase by high-rise king Harry Triguboff of the International Beach Resort property at No. 86 for $58 million, or just over $15,000 a square metre.
A sale at a similar rate would make the Batley site worth around $6.5 million.