NOOSA IGNITES WITH RECORD TROPHY HOMES
Once a sleepy surf town, Noosa has become Australia’s prestige property hotspot, where multi-million dollar knockdowns, architectural showpieces and record-setting sales are the new normal.
3 min
It wasn’t too long ago that Noosa was seen as a relaxed holiday town, more famous for its surf breaks and weekenders than record-breaking prestige property.
But much like much of Queensland, COVID lit a torch under the market, and in Noosa it was the prestige sector that surged the hardest.
Records tumbled, including one-bedroom apartments on Hastings Street, the suburb’s only true beachfront strip, changing hands for nearly $6 million. That’s a price point not seen anywhere else in Australia, not even Bondi Beach.
While some regional markets have since cooled as workers trudged back to the office, Australia’s wealthy have continued to pour into Noosa.
Their growing fortunes, from corporate payouts to generational wealth, have fuelled the demand. Think former Virgin Australia CEO Jayne Hrdlicka, who just received a $50 million payout from her former employer.
Just before Christmas last year she spent $17 million on a 1970s Noosa home, which she plans to knockdown and replace with a three-level luxury residence by Shaun Lockyer Architects.
The regional price record was set in 2021 when Peter Tighe, non-executive chairman of AuKing Mining and part-owner of champion mare Winx, paid $34 million for Webb House in Sunshine Beach.
Initially, speculation swirled that billionaire Gina Rinehart was the mystery buyer. Sunshine Beach still holds the crown for Noosa’s priciest sale, but the bulk of big-ticket transactions are now spread between absolute beachfront in Noosa Heads and the suburb’s sought-after waterways.
So far in 2025, there have been 42 sales above $5 million across the region. That’s broadly in line with the last three years, with the exception of 2021, when more than 90 properties over $5 million changed hands between January and September alone.
Higher interest rates aren’t applicable to this cohort of buyers.
This year Mark Fraser, the Queensland architect who founded beach shade giant CoolCabanas, paid $18 million on an empty X sqm block of land with approved plans for a new luxury home.
Brendan Pickering, the managing director of Pickerings Auto Group, spent $16.5 million to add to his collection of Noosa waterfront trophy homes, while the lesser known, Melbourne-based millionaires Robert and Abigail Polites, emerged as buyers of a $17.6 million home on Witta Circle, widely regarded as Noosa’s premier riverfront street.
The prestige market has been further energised with the listing of one of Noosa’s most striking waterfront homes, and it could set a new benchmark.
Reed & Co. agents Adrian Reed and Donna Taylor have just launched Casa Luca to market, a newly built Wyuna Drive home that recently won the 2025 Master Builders Regional Award.
Translating to “House of Light,” the home has been crafted by renowned designer Paul Clout, whose name is synonymous with Noosa’s most celebrated residences. Interiors are by Hong Henwood, incorporating Italian marble, Portuguese stone, Egyptian limestone, and hand-blown Soktas glass pendants.
Every detail has been carefully curated, and all the custom furnishings are included in the sale.
The residence offers a 20-metre river frontage with expansive glass panes framing uninterrupted water views. Inside, curved walls and soaring ceilings deliver dramatic impact, while a marble-clad galley kitchen with a 3.5-metre island bench forms the heart of the home.
It features a Gaggenau cooktop and ovens, dual integrated Fisher & Paykel fridges, and Miele dishwashers, a space designed to entertain as much as cook.
Spread across more than 500 sqm of internal living, the four king-sized bedrooms include a master retreat with a private riverfront terrace, walk-in robe, and ensuite clad in limestone and Italian marble.
Multiple lounge areas are anchored by Jetmaster and gas fireplaces, with terraces flowing to the pool, spa, and private jetty. A custom wine cellar and bar sit alongside the dining space, while an alfresco pavilion with an automated roof, BeefEater barbecue, plumbed gas fire pit, floating daybed, and magnesium pool complete the resort-style setting.
Competing for best trophy home listing this summer is another Paul Clout special, this one on Gympie Terrace in Noosaville. The home, dubbed One W, is listed with Century 21 Conolly Hay Group Noosa Heads agent Rachel Sellman, who is entertaining offers around the $20 million mark.
The highlight of the four-bedroom, three-level home is the rooftop terrace, channeling a chic Mediterranean beach club with a private heated pool and spa, floating daybeds, custom dining and lounging areas with a gas fireplace, a built-in barbecue, a bar with beer taps, and an adjustable pergola. Sharing this level is a fitness studio with a full gym, infrared sauna, and a steam shower.
For Central Element, the start of work at Pearl represents another step in the company’s growing eastern suburbs pipeline.
All three vehicles will form part of a broader charitable initiative benefiting Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, the American Red Cross and Starlight Children’s Foundation
Jack Freeman believes the most compelling interiors are not decorated, but collected. The FREEMAN & CO founder creates layered, personal spaces shaped by art, travel and craftsmanship.
4 min
For Jack Freeman, a compelling interior should not look as though it was completed in a single shopping trip.
The founder and designer behind FREEMAN & CO prefers rooms that develop through art, travel, commissioned furniture and objects collected over time. It is an approach that treats the home less as a decorative project and more as an evolving portrait of its owner.
“I am a true believer in collecting versus decorating,” Freeman says.
That distinction underpins the international practice he has built across private residences, hotels, property developments, yachts and private aviation. Its projects stretch from Point Piper, Vaucluse, Circular Quay and Toorak to Mayfair, Bel Air and the Caribbean.
Although the locations and architecture vary considerably, the work is connected by a restrained design language. Natural stone, warm timbers and sculptural furniture establish the foundation, while art, bespoke lighting and individual objects give each interior its identity.
The objective is not to overwhelm a room with obvious symbols of expense. It is to create an environment that feels calm, layered and particular to the people living within it.
“The greatest luxury isn’t about excess,” Freeman says. “It’s about creating an oasis where you come home and feel immediately grounded — effortlessly chic and deeply personal.”
Collecting instead of decorating
Decorating can imply the completion of a room: selecting the required furniture, filling the available walls and producing a coherent finished image.
Collecting is less conclusive.
A collected interior has room to change as its owners travel, discover artists, inherit pieces or reassess how they use their home. Its character comes from the relationship between objects rather than adherence to a single brand or season.
That does not mean placing unrelated pieces together without discipline. The designer must understand scale, proportion, material and provenance well enough to create a dialogue between them.
A contemporary artwork might sit beside a historic piece of furniture. A precisely detailed new interior may be interrupted by an irregular object made by hand. Smooth stone can be balanced by timber, textiles or a patinated metal surface that becomes richer with age.
The tension between those elements is part of the appeal.
For Freeman, art is not an accessory to be added once the furniture plan is complete. It forms part of the architecture and atmosphere of the room from the beginning.
Lighting is considered in the same way. Beyond its practical purpose, a bespoke fitting can operate as a suspended sculpture, changing both the room’s composition and the way its materials are experienced after dark.
A design perspective shaped by travel
International travel plays a significant role in Freeman’s creative process.
Design fairs such as PAD Paris and Salone del Mobile in Milan provide opportunities to encounter emerging designers, established galleries, new materials and collectible furniture away from the filter of social media.
More spontaneous discoveries can prove equally important.
“Sometimes it’s the simple things,” Freeman says. “That piece found on a shopping trip with a client in Paris, stumbling across an artisan’s workshop, or a special memory that forms the narrative of the story.”
Objects selected during travel bring more than visual interest into a home. They carry an association with a place, maker or experience, giving the client a connection that cannot be reproduced by ordering an entire interior from a catalogue.
Freeman’s influences are international, but his projects are not conceived as replicas of Parisian, Milanese or Californian style. Each commission responds to its architecture, setting, natural light and the daily lives of its occupants.
A waterfront Sydney residence demands a different treatment from a Mayfair townhouse. A Caribbean estate shaped by brutalist architecture and reflecting pools calls for another response again.
The designer’s role is to absorb those references without allowing them to overwhelm the individual qualities of the property.
Designing the complete experience
FREEMAN & CO extends beyond conventional interior decoration.
The practice’s stated services include interior design and architecture, project management, property acquisition, development advice, concept design, documentation, furniture and lighting design, procurement and art curation.
That breadth allows the team to become involved before a room’s dimensions and finishes are fixed.
Early participation can be important at the top end of the residential market, where architecture, landscape, interiors, technology and art must operate as one environment. Decisions about ceiling heights, wall dimensions, sightlines and lighting can directly affect where art is installed or how custom furniture is proportioned.
The practice can then carry those decisions through to procurement and final installation, maintaining the design narrative as a project moves between architects, builders, specialist craftspeople, dealers and suppliers.
Its residential portfolio includes a South Coast retreat conceived as an escape from urban life, a Caribbean estate with reflecting pools, an East Coast-inspired Palm Beach residence and a Mayfair townhouse organised around an expressive drawing room.
The studio also says it has worked on highly tailored Sydney residences with values exceeding $100 million, although the private nature of such commissions means individual addresses and clients are not always disclosed.
A home that can keep changing
The risk in creating a perfectly resolved interior is that it can become too static — a composition that looks exceptional in photographs but leaves little room for life.
Freeman sees the home as something that should evolve with its owners.
“I love the evolution of design,” he says. “We are talking about people’s lives, and as they evolve, so too should their private sanctuaries.”
That evolution might involve adding art, reupholstering a significant piece, adapting rooms as a family changes or making space for objects gathered through future travels.
The original design needs to be strong enough to accommodate those layers.
This may be the clearest expression of Freeman’s approach to luxury. It is not simply access to rare stone, collectible furniture or commissioned craftsmanship. It is the creation of a personal environment whose meaning deepens rather than diminishes with time.
Fact box
- Designer: Jack Freeman
- Role: Founder and managing director
- Practice: FREEMAN & CO
- Base: Australia, with international projects
- Project locations named by the practice: Point Piper, Vaucluse, Circular Quay, Toorak, Palm Beach, the NSW South Coast, Mayfair, Bel Air and the Caribbean
- Sectors: Private residences, hotels, residential developments, private aviation and superyachts
- Services: Interior design and architecture, property development, project management, property acquisition, documentation, furniture and lighting design, FF&E procurement, interior dressing and art curation
- Design philosophy: Collected, personal interiors shaped by art, craftsmanship, travel and enduring materials
- Website: free-man.co
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