NOT ALL SMOOTH SAILING FOR BILINGA GEM
RELIEF and joy flowed as ownerbuilders Andrew and Jasmine Smith popped the champagne to celebrate the sale of Cypress, their newly completed home at Bilinga.
Through Covid, the couple behind Merico Constructions poured everything into this beachside “passion project”, which sold under the hammer for $3.19m to a Brisbane family.
Auctioneer Justin Nickerson, of Apollo Auctioneers, gave an enticing introduction to the Golden Four Dr property, while marketing agent Troy Dowker, of Kollosche, described the view from the top deck as “50 shades of blue”.
The newly completed home, named for its striking facade of Australian pine, was the culmination of a project spanning four years since the Smiths purchased the original 507sq m block for $950,000 in late 2018.
They split the block, building a sleek New York loft-style twobedroom home on the smaller 175sq m lot. It sold last year for $1.2m.
But the Smiths’ journey hasn’t all been smooth sailing.
They abandoned an earlier campaign launched in July with another top agent because offers received fell far short of expectations.
“We definitely didn’t scrimp on anything with the quality of this very high-spec build, and that’s been really tricky because we did come across financial battles because of the pandemic,” Mrs Smith, 33, said.
“Our costs had doubled, and so our initial price point (for Cypress) was much, much higher, but the market had shifted and we had to completely rethink our strategy and go back to what we originally paid for the block.
“We had to sacrifice a bit for us to be able to move onto the next project, but that is what drives us.”
Mr Dowker said the subdivided block’s highway position had narrowed the buyer pool, but the result showed demand was outstripping supply for high-quality new-builds.
“The market really responded to the high quality of construction and really avant-garde design, however, it really proved to be a niche or very thin market,” he said.
The Smiths and their two children, Dekota, 10, and Harlow, 8, have moved between projects on the Gold Coast over the past 10 years, never staying longer than a year in one home.