‘Honey . . . I bought a house’

WHEN Jan Bradnam left the house one day about 15 years ago, she intended to go out and buy a new pot plant. What she ended up purchasing was far bigger and a lot more expensive.

“I had seen this house in the paper a couple of times and had been meaning to go and have a look, but I just hadn’t had the chance,” Mrs Bradnam said.

“On my way to the nursery, I went to see if the house was open for inspection, but when I got there I realised it was being sold and the auction was on,” she said.

“As I walked up the stairs I was so blown away by the view that I knew I just had to have it, so I started bidding. I was determined to buy the house.”

Within minutes it was all over and Mrs Bradnam returned home, minus a pot plant but the proud owner of a double-storey home at the top of Currumbin hill.

“It was the most outrageous thing I think I had ever done, and my husband just looked at me like a stunned mullet when I told him,” Mrs Bradnam said.

“Of course buying under auction, I had no building inspection, nothing. The place could have been about to crumble to the ground for all I knew. I didn’t care. I thought, at the least, the block of land surely had to be worth something.”

In a further twist, the Bradnams have never lived in the home.

“We rented it out for many years, but it was neglected by the tenants. Once we parted ways I set about bringing it up to standard, with the intention of putting it back into the rental pool,” Mrs Bradnam said. “But then I realised, it really deserved something better. It’s in such a beautiful spot. Where else do you get the national park at your back while overlooking the sea? That’s when we started pouring some real money into it.”

The Bradnams ended up gutting the home, rebuilding and redecorating it from scratch in a process that took two years.

“My daughter Peta did the interiors, she has a real knack for that sort of thing,” Mrs Bradnam said.

The renovation has transformed the property into a contemporary coastal home that any buyer looking to get into this tightly held enclave would be happy to own.