A BRISBANE businessman has become a hated man among his neighbours in Nobby Beach after holding out against a $40 million deal to sell a property.

Businessman Scott Lawes might not live on the Gold Coast but he blocked a bid to transform the dilapidated Nobbys Outlook into a luxury nine-storey resort after developer Sunland refused to pay him the figure he demanded for his ageing unit in 2013.

The man, who owns website Pays Online, was the only person out of 46 owners to hold up the deal. In Queensland, every owner in a strata-title scheme needs to agree before a sale proceeds.

The dispute escalated to the Queensland District Court where, in 2014, all parties agreed to sell but by then Sunland had lost interest.

The deal would have seen the resort’s 46 owners each net a luxury unit worth more than $1 million, a figure reportedly less than half what Mr Lawes was seeking.

It would have been a considerable boon for some of the owners who purchased units for as little as $50,000 each.

More than $250,000 in legal costs later, the building’s body corporate have now disbanded the scheme and handed the entire property over to a court-appointed trustee.

The prime beachfront block of land will be sold at auction at a discounted price to be decided by a third-party valuer.

It is understood the 7200sq m block could now go for as ­little as $26 million now that Sunland has walked away.

Unit owner and the resort’s manager Bob Keenan said the owners were “devastated” to lose their deal.

“Now we will all get next to nothing compared to what we would have got,” he said.

“Under the Sunland deal we would have got to stay here, now my business is being sold right out from under me.”

Mr Lawes has a considerable property portfolio including two houses in Brisbane, each with a land value in excess of $600,000.

He declined to speak with the Bulletin but his lawyer from Mahoneys in Brisbane, Ben Seccombe, said his client was trying to protect the other owners from a dodgy deal.

“Merely because more people believe something is true does not believe it is objectively true,” he said.

“They see Scott (Lawes) as the person who has effectively taken an opportunity away from them when really he has not done anything of the sort.

“He just wanted to make sure it was done properly with all the detail and ... proper agreements put in place rather than this half-cocked vague proposal which was put to them which had absolutely no substance to it ever.”