Max twigs to motel potential at Mermaid
MAX Twigg, who turned trash into cash and made a fortune, might have been badly burned at Mermaid Beach but it hasn’t made him shy of the suburb.
The Melburnian set a record of the wrong sort in 2011 when he sold a home in Millionaires’ Row, aka Hedges Ave, at a $10-million loss.
Now he’s apparently back in the Mermaid investment game as the buyer of a highway front motel.
He’s the latest person to cotton to the potential upside of properties fronting the route of the planned next stage of the light-rail line.
Motels built in the late 50s and 60s, some of them rather tired, are being targeted by developers and investors as apartment building and retail/ office sites. The developers who actively have been buying include Simon Lee, the Nikiforides brothers, Chris Bolger, Mark Kornhauser, and Taiwanese group Fong Da.
Motels targeted include the Broadshore, Tropicana, Surf Street, Mermaid Park, Camelot and Horizons.
Many have the benefit of enjoying two-street frontages.
The motel boom that hit the Gold Coast 70 or so years ago saw 85 motels built with a concentration along the Gold Coast Hwy, particularly in the Broadbeach-Mermaid strip.
The most notable of them, the Pink Poodle south of Surfers, made way for a highrise more than a decade ago.
The Twigg motel purchase at Mermaid is from a developer, Mermaid resident John Potter, who owns major motels in Toowoomba and Mackay. John bought the Surf Street Motel in late 2016 for $1.8 million, apparently as a land-banking exercise.
The Twigg buy is being made at $2.3 million but Max’s intentions for the 810sq m site aren’t known.
Max, who sold the Twigg Group waste management business for $155.8 million in April 2007, spent $17.7 million the next month buying 199 Hedges Ave from management rights operator Frank Picone and wife Adele for $17.5 million.
The buy was made ahead of the GFC and the house was sold mid-GFC, in 2011, for $7.7 million.
Max, when buying the house, apparently was oblivious to the fact that the Mermaid beachfront boom had been stoked by put-andcall options, trades and swaps.
He retains another Mermaid Beach property, at 31 Albatross Ave, bought for $10 million in 2008.
The Twigg riches of 2007 also saw Max buy the bustling Beach Hotel at Byron Bay for $44 million.
Eight months ago he sold it to a funds management group for $68.2 million.
Meanwhile, whatever happens with the Surf Street Motel, there’s already been one winner.
Property agent Tony Velissariou’s collected a double dose of sales commission, handling both the Twigg and Potter buys. Mind you, those commissions look pale alongside his ‘collect’ from selling the Potter beachfront house to billionaire Clive Palmer for $12 million in August this year. The Gold Coast Bulletin app lets you personalise your news feed so you never miss the stories that matter to you.