Just-retired surf Olympian Owen Wright breaks ground on $26 million ultra-luxury Byron Bay villa development!

Almost killed at Pipe, swindled of one-million dollars, now real estate mogul!

Four years ago, the one-time title contender turned real estate developer Owen Wright paid $5.1 million for an unremarkable beach shack a few hundred metres from The Pass in Australia’s Byron Bay. 

He saw more than the archetypal country soul utopia, the idyllic little timber house surrounded by almost half-an-acre of grass and trees where vegetables are grown and chickens are humanely employed to harvest their protein-rich eggs, of course.

Owen, who survived a traumatic brain injury at Pipe in 2015 as well as having a slice of his fortune swindled by a horse racing enthusiast a couple of years back, saw a fleet of four cubist villas built of concrete and timber and with Tesla batteries and swimming pools and gardens that “blur the boundaries between indoor and outdoor living to create a refined subtropical sanctuary ideal for all seasons.” 

He kept one of the villas for himself and his fam and so did the developer Burke Urban – a good sign, for if the two principals behind the build are hanging around y’know your six-mill plus ain’t gonna fall down around your ears, or if it does you don’t have far to to go to vent spleen or chuck a poorly installed faucet at ’em.

Now, Owen and his partners have broken ground on the build, a bulldozer taking the first divots out of that luminous green grass fed from that fertile volcanic soil. 

“Exciting news! We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve officially broken ground at Daniels Street in Byron Bay, and in late 2024, we’ll be welcoming 4 magnificent residences in this breathtaking location.”

One sold (for $6.5 mill in May, 2022), one to go.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Owen Wright (@owright)

Owen ain’t afraid of playing the real estate game.

You’ll remember the $1.6 million house at Lennox Head with its indoor swimming pool that meandered through the living room,  the Federation-style house in Byron Bay (a little under a million), the beachfront townhouse at Thirroul (675,000) and the gorgeous mountain-top hideaway (bought for 750k, sold for a million).

Byron Bay, howevs, is where Owens is laying his hat, so to speak, a town where he keeps multiple properties and which was once beautifully described as “the apex of the peak for the lifestyle obsessed VAL. A voluptuous lava flow from an ancient volcano protrudes further east into the tepid sub-tropical Pacific than any point on the Australian Mainland. The Bay it circumscribes is lavishly decorated with sand-bottom peelers. No other place on earth is so falsifiably mytho-poetically rhapsodized over by post-modern knowledge workers.”