RETIREE HAPPY TO SIT ON GOLDEN EGG WHILE PROPERTY PRICES SOAR
RETIRED scuba diving instructor Rodney Sylvester Reid is well aware he is sitting on a real estate golden egg.
His three-bedroom brick Byron Bay house has been in the family since 1963 and he has no intention of selling up any time soon despite the fact the property market in the area is booming.
“Where am I going to go?” Sylvester Reid said.
“It is the old story. It is just the brother and I left and he is living in London.
“It is only a quarter block but it is worth a bit.”
Sylvester Reid’s parents bought the house for £2000. It is in a prime position, about 100 metres from the beach and two blocks from town.
While some Byron residents are stressed about property prices soaring so high that it is not affordable for locals, 70-year-old Sylvester Reid is set to reap the benefits when he does eventually sell, with an estimate for the home at up to $2m.
His home is surrounded by holiday rentals. There is a handwritten sign on his front window telling tourists not to camp overnight on his lawn.
“It is very different to when I was 12 when we first moved here,” he said.
“The biggest thing is you get a bigger diversity of people here.
“The people who have been here for a fair while tend to stick together. You can tell the tourists by the sun tan.”
Sylvester Reid spent 21 years in the Royal Australian Air Force as a young adult before returning to Byron Bay and starting a travel agency “when computers were just starting”.
After a few years, he followed his true passion and became a scuba diving instructor.
“It was good to meet the young people coming through, they were all fit and active,” he said. “No matter what people do to the town, how they clog it up or anything, you get on that boat and head out towards the Julian Rocks (Nguthungulli Nature Reserve) and look back and it is still the same place.
“That is probably the real crux of why I stay here, they can’t really change the place too much.”