BUYER OF $10M HEDGES MANSION
DAVID Pain, who has made a splashing success out of building swimming pools, is about to test the water for some rather well-heeled people later this month.
They’re owners trying to sell lots in what probably is the most elite street on The Sovereign Islands at Paradise Point.
Pain, who started the Leisure Pools business 20 years ago at Yatala and has seen it operate in more than 20 countries, is hoping an auction next month will turn up a single buyer for three adjoining lots he plunged into during the GFC.
They are in Knightsbridge Pde East, an address in which the most valuable blocks have absolute Broadwater frontage and look either north or northeast.
The Pain holding, almost at the cul-de-sac’s end, is the only three-pack overlooking the Broadwater left in the street and its views take in South Stradbroke Island and down the Broadwater to the Surfers Paradise skyline.
It totals 2250sq m and has a Broadwater frontage of more than 80m.
Pain apparently intended to use the lots for a single large family home but has since moved offshore to ramp up Leisure Pools’ operations in the US.
His Knightsbridge auction is being seen as a litmus test for Broadwater land values in the street – and the neighbouring Knightsbridge Pde West – which were hit during the GFC but have been recovering.
The “premium” lots could be bought for little more than $1 million during the GFC, a far cry from the $2 millionplus some sold for when launched.
GFC shopper Pain, who has been described on one website as the president of Leisure Pools, paid between $1.3 million and $1.575 million for his three lots.
One earlier had sold for $2.2 million and another for $1.9 million.
Other owners trying to sell probably will be hoping buyers at the Pain auction won’t be too leisurely with their bidding.
If the lots sell, the vacantlot options will be reduced for newcomers who aspire to put that very British title Knightsbridge in their home address.
The Knightsbridge precinct took shape on the last of six islands formed in the Broadwater by the late
Bernie Lewis’s Lewis Land as The Sovereign Islands.
Bernie started the exercise in the ’80s and in the build-up to the start of the GFC in 2008, Sovereign was a golden performer on the Gold Coast.
It reached new heights in price terms with the launch of the Knightsbridge precinct and made news when a couple who had been living in the UK paid $9.4 million for four adjoining lots on the parade’s eastern arm.
The average of $2.35 million for those lots rarely has been topped for any Knightsbridge Pde East title since then, although $2.4 million was paid for one in October and others are for sale at close to that figure.
The Pain exit move is not new – the Leisure Pools boss tested the water in 2015 when one of the lots was marketed at $1.85 million but he wasn’t deluged with offers.