F45 co-founder Adam Gilchrist circles Lennox Head pad to complete a $6.8m property play

Endodontist Syd Bader has regarded his beachfront apartment at Lennox Head as a home away from home since he bought it in 2004 for $622,500 when his second of three sons was just a baby.

It was more than just a holiday home given it soon became a regular base to stay when he attends his local dental clinic, visit his farm and see his father, who lives nearby, but is now also where he plans to settle eventually when he retires.

But if the newly minted multimillionaire and F45 gym franchise co-founder Adam Gilchrist gets his way, the Bader family will be handing over the keys to their Seven Mile Beach apartment to him.

“But not everything in this world is for sale,” Dr Bader said. “It’s just not possible for us to replace this: to sit on the deck and walk just metres to the beach and surf.

That might make the block’s next strata meeting a little awkward given Mr Gilchrist recently bought the block’s remaining three apartments in a trust, of which corporate records show he is sole director and shareholder.

Records show the beachfront apartment above Dr Bader’s was bought for $1.05 million, and a few months later the two street-front apartments at the rear of the block added for a total of $1.95 million.

It comes just a year after Mr Gilchrist’s trust bought the beachfront house next door for $3.8 million, with recent renovations already undertaken to add a new swimming pool and decking.

Neither Mr Gilchrist nor Dr Bader would disclose how much was offered to Dr Bader for his apartment.

Indeed, Mr Gilchrist cast aspersions on the ownership, first saying he didn’t own it, and later clarifying he isn’t the only party involved in the discretionary trust behind the company owner, and that he has no plans to redevelop the block.

“They are just an investment,” he said this week. “I’ve already engaged an agent to get them ready for rent.”

Mr Gilchrist is no stranger to neighbourly purchases. Having bought a beachside Californian bungalow in Freshwater in 2017 for $5.4 million, he added the three-storey house next door in August for $14 million amid plans to demolish it to make way for a swimming pool.

It comes just six months after he paid a Byron Bay record of $18.85 million for the Wategos Beach trophy home of art collector and Dakota Capital head Danny Goldberg.

But Dr Bader says he isn’t unreasonable. Given comparable sales on the beachfront – such as the $2.7 million beachfront duplex bought a few doors away by coal tycoon David Knappick late last year – he says he would sell if Mr Gilchrist wants to buy him a like-for-like property on the beachfront.