ON THE QT
Slow burn at Carrara with a possible recordbreaking home sale 20 years in the making.
OTTO Pfeiffer, a reclusive multimillionaire who is not officialdom’s biggest fan, could well be a recordbreaker when it comes to the time taken to sell a house.
The straight-talking Otto, best known as the owner of the former Cable Ski World at Coombabah, put his sprawling Carrara home on the market 20 years ago.
The nine-bedroom riverfront property, Villa Riverbend, has been through the hands of a multitude of agents since then but it is “unmoved”.
Even a 2016 Elvis Presley touch to a marketing campaign failed to hit the right note with buyers.
An agent’s marketing blurb read: “You can pretend you are Elvis when you enter through the gates and drive down your private driveway through park-like grounds …”.
The Riverbend Ave Pfeiffer home was bought in 1996 for $1.6 million, extensively refurbished, and then first marketed at $3.1 million in 1997.
Otto shelled out $1 million that same year to add an adjoining 5312sq m block, giving him a total site area of 1.745ha.
The price tag was hoisted to $6.25 million in 2002, went to $12.5 million in 2007, and jumped to $21.5 million later that year.
The latest marketing foray is under way at $15 million – the same amount Otto pocketed when he sold his ski park to Australand 14 years ago.
However, in the latest campaign there is a qualification – “the owner is ready to negotiate”.
Otto doesn’t have a record for speed when it comes to quitting Gold Coast property.
Back in 1995 he put a Burleigh penthouse on the market, hoping for a quick $1.5 million sale.
It sold in 2002 for
$1.15 million.
Eleven years ago he put a Mexican-style house on The Sovereign Islands, bought for $2 million in 2003, on the market. The house, which was wearing a $3.9 million tag, remains in the Pfeiffer name.
Otto, who made hubcaps in Melbourne before heading north at 45, apparently wants to exit the Gold Coast in favour of Cairns.
If he does leave, the city will have lost one of its more dogmatic characters, one who has insisted that officialdom can “go to hell”.
Back in the late ’90s he was in strife with the city council over the bulldozing of 500 trees at his ski park.
Three years later the council won a bitter tree High Court stoush.
The Yugoslav migrant also sparked controversy when he loaned $3.5 million to a Gold Coast private school in 2002 to keep it afloat.
In Cairns, Otto’s marketing a housing estate called Canopy’s Edge, which is master-planned to include apartments, large house lots, lakeside apartments and a retirement village.
The Pfeiffer offerings there appear to go out the door more quickly than those on the Gold Coast. Of course, having a ski park on “Canopy’s” edge probably helps.