Neil Hipwell has built a highly successful and award-winning building business, creating luxury homes up and down the coast. By Lynne Testoni
There is a myth that it’s just a matter of having a lucky break when it comes to creating a successful business, but according to Neil Hipwell of Futureflip, it’s much more about working very hard and putting in long hours. Unglamorous, but true.
After leaving school at the age of 14 “I was just failing at school,” he says. “I was terrible—dyslexic, ADHD, and really struggling”, Hipwell says he found his calling when he did work experience with a local builder.
“I started doing work experience and I just loved it,” he adds. “It was just the best thing ever. The builder I was working with was pretty impressed, so he’s like, ‘Mate, if you want to just keep working, you can just keep coming every day’. So I just never went back to school.”
After completing his apprenticeship four years later, Hipwell left to start his own business, Futureflip, in 2008.
“Basically, the day I got qualified I set up Futureflip and started my own thing from that day on,” he says. “I’ve never worked for anyone else other than myself from my apprenticeship to now.”
BIG THINGS GROW
“Futureflip started as bathrooms, kitchens, decks, pergolas, and basically anything I could get my hands on. Then it evolved into top-floor additions and then major renovations, then design and construct started when I was about 23.
Clients started trusting me to do the design as well as the build—and it went from there,” he recalls.
Originally from the Sutherland Shire, Hipwell and his family which includes wife Krystal (who also works in the business and manages Bunker Escapes and the family’s property portfolio), are now based in Byron Bay where he is doing his own developments, supplemented by
client work back in Sydney.
It’s been almost 20 years of long hours and investing in the business, but he and Krystal are now building their forever home in Byron, with a view to creating the same level of luxury that they have built for their clients. While they have lived in some of the various investment properties they have built over the years, this is the first time they are creating their own luxury home to keep.
Hipwell says he wanted to ensure that the business was strong financially before they built their own home.
“My parents didn’t have much growing up and we had a pretty modest upbringing,” he explains, “so I had to work to get a set-up going. I saved pretty hard to get my first property. I didn’t drink, I didn’t party, I didn’t travel.
I worked 80 hours a week for at least 10 to 12 years straight, before I had kids. I packed 20 years of work into 10 years, doing double the amount of work most people do to try and get myself ahead early.
“So I definitely worked really hard. But to be honest, I was so obsessed and passionate about what I did, I preferred to be working than surfing or travelling and I was just so into it.”
BY THE BAY
Futureflip has a strong management team now, so Hipwell mostly concentrates on his own developments, and is currently working on seven different luxury home and holiday home projects around the Byron bay area. The family business now also includes Bunker Escapes, an escape/holiday brand. These impressively grand homes (many sleep 12-16) were built by Futureflip and are located in Byron Bay and Gerringong on the NSW South Coast. There are 11 properties in the Bunker portfolio with a combined value of more than $50 million.
“It’s a much better return,” explains Hipwell. “I get a commercial return on a residential investment, which has been a better strategy while the market’s been a little bit up and down. I can get bigger rents and hold really nice blue-chip properties in good areas that ride the wave a bit better than selling straight away in whatever market it’s in.
“Krystal manages Bunker Escapes and our property portfolio, including the guest experience, styling and curation across all of the properties. I still do luxury home developments myself. We’ve currently got seven properties in Byron Bay that we’ve bought and are in the process of building or designing.
“We’ve seen a great opportunity up here for developments of really high-end properties, so we’re targeting that now. We don’t do client work up here. We’re still focused on the Sydney market for our client builds and designs.”
AWARD WINNING
Futureflip won the 2026 HIA Australian Custom Built Home as well as the 2026 HIA Australian People’s Choice Winner, for a spectacular client project in Gerroa on the south coast.
The brief was broad and the client generous, Hipwell said, resulting in an amazing home. “It was for a long term client, and he sold his business and got a bit more money, so he went, ‘Let’s just go crazy and do the coolest house ever’. It was pretty much endless budget and I could do everything I could imagine.”
While the family is now permanently located in Byron, Hipwell still flies back to Sydney every three weeks, spending four days with the Futureflip business, which now has a general manager.
It’s an impressive result for a man who left school at 14.
“When I look back, none of this was part of a carefully planned roadmap,” Hipwell says. “It began with a builder who gave a struggling teenager a chance. The building industry changed my life. It gave me confidence, purpose, opportunity and a future.
“Eighteen years later, I’m still driven by the same dream I had as an apprentice—to create exceptional homes, build great businesses, and provide opportunities for the next generation.
“Because somewhere out there is another 14-year-old kid who feels like they don’t fit the mould. And they might just be the future of our industry.”
Photography: Supplied
