On the QT: Second biggest house site on Mermaid beachfront
IT is the second biggest beachfront house site ever built at this lucrative Gold Coast suburb. Childcare baron Michael Dempsey’s “simple family home” is going to take a lot of space, and a lot of money.
Business
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THE task of assembling a large site fronting the ocean at Mermaid Beach is far from child’s play and it takes more than a lunch box full of money.
That’s why Michael Dempsey, who made a $150 million fortune as an indirect result of a childcare industry foray, unobtrusively has achieved just that.
Michael, who’s 53 and the father of two young children, in a patient three-year exercise has put together a 2039sq m holding with frontages to Albatross Ave and Surf St.
It’s the second biggest house site assembled on the Mermaid beachfront since former lawyer Scott Perrin, armed with profits from the 2000 float of surfwear company Billabong, assembled a 2883sq m holding.
The major part of the Perrin amalgamation came from paying $6.6 million for the homes of PRD Realty co-founder Gordon Douglas and developer the late Brian Ray.
It was a deal that was an eye-opener at the time and was the catalyst for a beachfront boom that peaked in 2008 when the GFC hit.
NEW TOWER PLANNED FOR GOLD COAST SITE
The Dempsey beachfront ‘dabble’ has involved outlaying more than $12 million for three titles, with the key one the beachfront home of BreakFree founder Tony Smith and wife Simone, bought for $8.42 million in 2015.
Michael, a passionate surfer, and wife Stef reportedly are planning to bowl the three houses on the family’s holding so they can build a home that “won’t be a Taj Mahal”.
Instead it will be a simple family home without a large footprint and surrounded by gardens that flow down to the 32-metre beach frontage.
Michael was running a couple of Brisbane childcare centres in the late 90s when he became frustrated over getting payments from parents.
MAIN BEACH DEVELOPERS LEAVE TOWN
He started a payments system called Ezidebit and it was sold to a US group for $305 million in October 2014, with Michael’s share $150 million.
The Dempseys quickly bought a $5.15 million riverfront home at Teneriffe in Brisbane and their initial Mermaid beachfront buy followed in early 2015.
An adjoining Surf St house was added in 2016 for $1.8 million and Michael has just spent $2.165 million to gain a third property, apparently months after unsuccessfully negotiating to secure it from one Sebastien-Dominik Dietrich-Georg Johannigmeister-Vanderjagenburg.
‘Seb’ is a fellow who a little while back bought a beachfront Mermaid house from former Melbourne lawyer Brendan Behan for $5.2 million.
Meanwhile, in beachfront land terms, Michael Dempsey sits in front of one Mermaid billionaire but behind another.
Pubs and pokies baron Bruce Mathieson calls an $18 million property on a 1395sq m site home.
Melbourne toymaker Manny Stuhl, on the other hand, rests his head in Tidemark, the $25 million ex-Perrin house on 2883sq m.
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