From grand 50-room estates to abandoned, fire-ravaged hotels, one agent turned his passion for restoration into a niche career, specialising in heritage property sales.
Described as “hauntingly beautiful” and an iconic landmark in Tasmania’s West, a 125-year-old abandoned hotel has gone up for sale, with historic real estate specialist Dominic Romeo in charge of the listing.
Located in the one-street town of Linda, the Royal Hotel was built in 1901 as a weatherboard hotel, which first burnt down in 1910, before being rebuilt with reinforced concrete.
More than 100 years later, those walls are the only remains of the original building still standing.
“It is just a huge shell. There’s no flooring upstairs or downstairs, and it has no roof,” Romeo told REB.
“There are ferns and shrubs growing downstairs everywhere. It is a major restoration job.”
Romeo said the property would require a significant investment from buyers, being essentially a total rebuild.
Despite having generated its fair share of interest, Romeo said he ensured that potential buyers understood all the implications and costs of restoring the building to its former glory.
“One, you need the money, but also you’ve got to have the vision to even be able to put something like that together.”
“But there will be someone out there who has the combination of the funds to do it and the vision to see it through.”
Additionally, the listing included a dwelling that operated as a cafe until 2025, providing an opportunity to cater to the region’s tourist traffic, just 10km from the historic township of Queenstown.
Listing historic properties
While heritage properties span across all of Australia, Romeo said that when he first started his real estate journey, he identified a gap in the market, pushing him to open his own specialist historic property agency.
“I saw that there was no one really specialising in historic property, and I’ve got all this knowledge I developed over the years, and I thought that I’d start going down that path. It’s been an amazing journey.”
“There is no one else in Australia doing what I am doing.”
Being an avid property restorer with his wife, Romeo said the pair had actively brought back to glory 15 properties, from small cottages to 50-room houses.
He said his own experience had given him the edge in the heritage space, as clients were not only looking for a property but for support throughout the journey as well.
“I understand the policies and restoration costs. It’s all the kind of knowledge I can help my buyers with, because many of them are uncertain about heritage listings and state registers.”
“So I do talk the language that helps to ease their minds about what is involved with buying heritage-listed properties.”
Navigating heritage restrictions
While heritage properties can be appealing for their charms and history, Romeo said that potential buyers needed to understand what would be allowed to be done with the restoration.
He said that when a property was heritage-listed, it would have specific features that may be protected, such as bricks, paint, trees, or even the design of the house.
“It’s a matter of getting the relevant authorities out to the property and talking about it, because if they feel like you are going in there gung-ho and trying to destroy the building or you don’t know what you are doing, they can be quite restrictive.”
“Because if you just go ahead and do it without anyone’s permission, that is when you run into trouble.”
While the dwelling status would restrict what buyers could change, Romeo said the approval process could be quite flexible as long as owners were clear about their plans with the intent to maintain the home and preserve its piece of history.
“They are important buildings, and they’re worthy of protection, so anyone taking on these buildings at any level needs to be doing the right things.”
A mutual understanding
With the majority of the client base being “heritage purists”, Romeo said it was important to lean into the property’s story rather than focus on facts and figures.
“I know where my buyers are coming from; a lot of them have always dreamt about purchasing or restoring a historic house. I admire those people because they are gutsy.”
He said that the heritage market was full of transactions in which all parties wanted to ensure the property would be cared for going forward.
“A lot of these buyers have the same train of thought as I do, as do the vendors.”
“They are just passionate about heritage property, and they don’t want to see it go to someone who is going to destroy or demolish it.”
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