Ex-Big Brother star’s $25m empire revealed

Former magazine model and reality TV star Krystal Hipwell has set her sights on a new big money deal to add to her $25m empire. Picture: Harlem Productions.

FutureFlip property developer entrepreneur Neil Hipwell and his wife, Krystal, a former lads’ magazine model who appeared on Big Brother in 2006, have secured their latest Byron Bay project.

It is a 4093sq m rural building block at Ewingsdale on Byron Bay’s outskirts which was purchased for $1.1m.

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Property developer Neil Hipwell and his wife, Big Brother star Krystal Hipwell, have bought their next Byron Bay project site. Picture: realestate.com.au

The deal represents the continued generational baton change as it was bought from Cornell Holdings, the pioneering Byron investment company of actor Delvene Delaney and her late husband John “Strop” Cornell, who died in 2021. Glen Irwin of Byron Bay Real Estate Agency sold the Wallaby Close block.

Ewingsdale is popular with the influencer set.

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Neil and Krystal Hipwell. Picture: Instagram

Model Olive Cooke and her builder husband, Henry Tervenski, from Morada Build, constructed a luxe Instagram-worthy retreat which sold for $6.3m in 2022.

It was on a 4053sq m building block that had been sold by Cornell Holdings in 2016 for $605,000.

Delany released a documentary in March dedicated to John’s role in the making of the box-office-record-breaking classic, Crocodile Dundee, starring their friend Paul Hogan.

Hogan co-wrote the script for Crocodile Dundee in 1985.

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Ewingsdale is popular with the influencer set.

Delaney, who is still based in the Byron area, had married Cornell in 1977.

It was 1983 when the trio first homed in on the Byron district to spend $265,000 on an 8ha oceanfront holding, just south of the town, on Seven Mile Beach. It was sold for $5.02m to the Smorgon family from Melbourne in 2005.

They also separately owned large holdings on Belongil Beach, which was been carved up and sold.

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The Hipwell couple have a property portfolio with an estimated $25m worth, including luxury holiday homes under their business Bunker Escapes in the Snowy Mountains, the Shoalhaven and Byron Bay.

The Hipwells have a property portfolio with an estimated $25m worth, including luxury holiday homes in Byron Bay.

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