Matthew Johnson and Laura Byrne’s South Coast renovation was meant to create their dream holiday home, but instead it has left them with a “mountain of debt”.
Appearing on Home Beautiful’s The Edit podcast, Johnson, better known as Matty J, revealed The Bachelor couple are now renting out their stunning coastal Ulladulla property, 230 kilometres south of Sydney, to help pay the bills.
Matty J and Laura Byrne Instagram/@ladyandacat
The couple purchased the property, called Chante Mer, in June 2024 for $2.19 million and quickly set about bringing it back to life after it had sat empty for about four years.
Johnson said that ahead of the auction they chatted to their accountant, who confirmed “it was a bad idea, financially.”
“We are in a mountain of debt. We’ll be paying off this house for a very, very, very long time,” he said.
After 12 months of renovations, the family finally got to use the home as they had dreamed – only for about eight months.
“Then we had our third child, Poppy, and work’s been really busy,” Johnson explained.
“And then it kills us to say, but we just weren’t able to get down there as much as we wanted to.”
This, plus the unexpected cost of the renovations, led them to turn it into an Airbnb.
“We thought we were just going to make it watertight, put a lick of paint on, and we got sucked into the renovation and made it a lot bigger than we originally planned,” Johnson said.
“So we were like, we need help paying this mortgage. We decided we would start renting it out.”
Johnson and Byrne documented the house’s progress on its own Instagram page, bringing more than 100,000 followers along on the renovation journey.
The pair live in North Bondi with their three daughters, Marlie-Mae, 6, Lola, 5, and Poppy, nine months.
They also own a three-bedroom house in New South Wales’ Northern Rivers region.