Entreprenuer Justin Butterworth lists Bronte home
Justin Butterworth, the entreprenuer who pioneered online holiday home rental websites in Australia, has listed his architecturally stunning Bronte home.
His Palmerston Avenue home comes with a $3.9 million to $4.29 million McGrath Estate Agents price guidance.
The Dale Jones-Evans designed home last traded at $2.6 million in 2012.
It was the Goode-Nicholas family who built on the 270-square-metre site on Palmerston Avenue in 2005, a family home with four bedrooms, three bathrooms, a study, a media room and plenty of indoor-outdoor living space. It is nicknamed the "Mound House."
It features semi-enclosed entertainers' decking.
Since last September, following 16 years, Jason Butterworth has been on a work break, initially taking off overseas to travel, study and also explore new business opportunities.
He was most recently at the Stayz website, but Butterworth had previously been with HomeAway, YesBookit, Rentahome and Takeabreak.
It was in 1999, after being an economist at the NSW Treasury, that he founded Australia's first online bookable holiday and short term rental website.
The big break came in 20011 when Fairfax Media bought Butterworth's Occupancy Pty Limited, paying $29 million for rentahome.com.au and takeabreak.com.au.
At the time Fairfax's own website Stayz handled 10 percent of the holiday rental bookings in Australia, with industry analysts calculating the deal with Occupancy saw Stayz then having 60 percent of the market with the addition of around 30,000 properties.
Occupancy’s Sydney based co-owners with Justin Butterworth were Craig Davis, Michelle Davis and Penny Parsons who shared $17.9 million in cash from Fairfax and $11.2 million worth of shares in the Stayz business.
Butterworth and his rentahome business had joined forces with Davis’ and Parsons and their takeabreak.com.au business in 2010.
These businesses earned their main revenues from an 8% commission paid by property owners on every booking. Stayz was sold in late 2013 to US-listed holiday rentals group HomeAway for about $220 million.
Butterworth remains an active Angel investor with an interest in providing seed investments in fintech or arbitrage type business models.
This article was first published in the Sunday Telegraph.