Joel Parkinson to list Snapper Rocks sub-penthouse with $10 million-plus hopes

It has all the markers of wealth, heated pool, daybeds, steam room, gymnasium, personal surfboard locker rooms, fire pit, even a “surfboard preparation room.

The 2012 world surf champ, Joel Parkinson, “fast and acrobatic” in small waves and “cool-handed” when it got big, is reportedly planning to sell his five-bedroom sub-penthouse overlooking Snapper Rocks with hopes of ten million dollars-plus. 

Parkinson bought the joint on level ten of Flow Residences at Rainbow Bay off the plan in 2020 for $6.84 million. The apartment spans almost six-thousand square feet and its balcony adds another forty-two hundred square feet. A real mansion in the sky, Delta Dawn style.

You’ll remember Parkinson sold his riverfront Tweed Heads compound for a record-breaking $2.52 million to buy into developer Paul Gedoun’s exclusive Flow residences.

Parkinson’s house at 41 Crystal Waters Drive, Tweed Heads, five beds, three shitters, was bought in 2006 by the then twenty five year old for $1.1 million.

Its myriad features, which  include a boat pontoon, seapen, private beach and solar battery storage put homebuyers, already driven insane by Australia’s latest property bubble, into a terrific spin and was sold after only one inspection.

Men’s Journal inspected inside:

The master bedroom and bath are like something from Elvis’s mansion. Huge bed, massive hotel-style bathroom, another flat-screen telly mounted on the far wall, a walk-in wardrobe, and you guessed it–views, views, and more views. With the sea breeze blowing through and floor-to-ceiling windows in each corner, it feels like we’re standing on clouds.

Peeling a little off that sale, as well as the proceeds of the $200 million sale of Balter Beer, Parkinson bought into the yet-to-be-completed twelve-storey build at 1 Petrie St, Rainbow Bay, twenty-two apartments or “oceanic residences” with an average price of three-and-a-half mill.

As I wrote back in 2020,  it’s “got all the usual markers of wealth, heated pool, daybeds, steam room, gymnasium, personal surfboard locker rooms, fire pit, even a “surfboard preparation room” where, perhaps, locals might be employed to fix their masters’ surfboards and where lucky children with whisky breath will be free to roam and little dogs sourced from Mexico will be trained to walk on their hind legs.“

Parko, who has three children, said as much as enjoyed living on a river, ain’t no place like the ocean.

“We’ve been out of town, off the beach, for a while now and now with the kids growing up, we wanted to be closer,” he told the Courier Mail. “For a surfer, you couldn’t get a better view on the Coast than what we’ll have from Flow. It was a bit of a no-brainer and we got in (to buy) as fast as we could. The quality of finishes and the lifestyle are going to be incredible. We’re very lucky.”

Four-time world surfing champ Mark Richards, who was an owner in the low-rise block of six ghetto apartments that sold to the developer for twelve-mill and which was subsequently demolished for Flow, also bought into the tower.

Anyway, a joint three floors down, which sold off the plan for $3.27 million and which is a third of the size internally and with a balcony one tenth of Parko’s, just sold for $7.4 million, meaning ten mill is an easy hit for a man already worth many millions, although not as much as his pal Mick Fanning.

Parkinson, who is forty five, earned the nickname Coolie Karen three years ago after a “wild Gold Coast pell-mell involving mud-sliding, tiktok, ageism and alleged hand-to-hand contact!”when he was at the centre of a is lis“wild Gold Coast pell-mell involving mud-sliding, tiktok, ageism and alleged hand-to-hand contact!”