Hat Head is a unique coastal village because it is surrounded by National Park, so the village cannot be expanded and therefore blocks of land and homes for sale are quite rare. A vacant block of land in our street sold for over $400,000. Consequently, house prices in Hat Head reflect this situation. At present, there is another property for sale for over $950,000, situated not far from our home. Our architect-designed home cost us $450,000 to build and a number of people have judged it to be the best home in Hat Head. We would love to keep our house in Hat Head as our holiday home, but unfortunately we can’t afford to do this. We initially built the home while we were living in Brisbane and then spent holidays in our lovely home. Then we decided to retire to Hat Head as it was such a wonderful life-style. We are selling now because both of our daughters recently moved back to Australia from overseas and have settled in Sydney and we find our duties as grandparents increasingly require our presence in Sydney. We had our property valued before we put it on the market by four different agents and the valuation varied between $750,000 and $920,000, which demonstrates the difficulty in placing a value on a luxury-style home in a small coastal village. We initially listed our home at $728,000 to be realistic in terms of attracting buyers and have since reduced the price to $695,000 to access the $600,000 bracket on the internet. We have realised that our client base is a niche market, which is why we originally contacted you.
Hat Head is the headland between South West Rocks in the north and Crescent Head in the south. It is a premium holiday destination and it is possible to drive along the magnificent Hat Head Beach to South West Rocks in a four wheel drive vehicle. Korogoro Creek which flows out to the sea at Hat Head beach is unique as it never closes over so boats can always access ocean fishing, while the swimming in the estuary at high tide is magical. You can float down the creek to the beach on the out tide (or vice versa), making it great fun for holiday makers. My wife loves this aspect of living in Hat Head and because Hat Head is the closest place in Australia to the Continental Shelf, the water stays quite warm until the end of May. This proximity to the Continental Shelf also provides the excellent fishing all year round and means that the whales come in very close to Hat Head to feed. It is also very safe swimming for children because the creek mouth and estuary is protected by the huge headland. The surf is also great, particularly at Connors Beach which is a 3 min walk over the hill south from our home. These unique characteristics of Hat Head attract hundreds of holiday makers in the peak seasons, so houses and the caravan park are booked out. This means that you could let a home like ours for $2000 a week minimum, in the peak holiday season. Very modest houses already attract this amount of rent. The village itself is very picturesque with a pedestrian bridge over the estuary and beautiful scenery from the headland and surrounds. It has a General Store, a caf and a Bowling Club which has a nice little restaurant run by a qualified chef, as well as a big covered outdoor barbecue area where they have live music in holiday times. The surf beach is patrolled in the summer season and there is a small surf lifesaving club.

We designed the house for easy holiday living so the living areas are tiled, as is the downstairs second bedroom with ensuite bathroom and sliding doors out onto the verandah. The upstairs bedrooms and lounge/theatre room are carpeted for comfort, while the master bedroom has a beautiful spa bath ensuite and a huge walk-in-robe, plus sliding doors opening onto the north facing deck. We included three bathrooms in the house as this makes it easy to share a holiday with family or rent to a group of couples. There is also tons of storage and the double garage is huge. The kitchen is set up with holiday makers in mind, with easy access to a big central cupboard for glasses and crockery, plus pot draws and a big corner pantry. There is also a Shlock double sink included as a unique feature in the bench and a glass splash back.
Re the option to subdivide (noted in the original email), we built the house up on the back of the block leaving the front part of the block free in order to subdivide and build another dwelling if so desired. Council have approved this use of the block and all the services have been placed along the western perimeter to allow a new building to be erected without encroaching on the current dwelling’s services. There is town sewerage and town water connected, but we have also put in a number of water tanks to service toilets, washing machine and the fully reticulated gardens. The block also has two street frontage – Home Street at the front and Ledge Street at the back, with ready access to both streets.