Blog # 5 - It all Started with a Wave

It all started in the Maldives. I was surfing with my mates, chasing a big wave. I paddled in, dropped down the face… and instead of flying, I fell — headfirst into a coral reef.

My board snapped. My leg rope got caught under the coral. I was bleeding and couldn’t reach the surface. When I finally did, I was dragged into a rip and washed onto a small island — one we’d been told to avoid.

It took my friends over an hour to realise I was gone. In that time, bleeding and coughing up seawater, I wandered through the island — and what I saw changed everything.

The people there weren’t fighting nature. They were living with it.

Homes were built from bamboo and natural materials. Roofs made from leaves. Independent water systems. Everything was designed to protect both people and the environment. It was biophilic living — humans and nature in harmony. And despite everything I’d just been through, I felt peaceful.

That experience sparked a question that wouldn’t leave me:

What if we could build homes that protect nature, not destroy it?

What if our buildings could restore ecosystems, not remove them?

What if the way forward meant learning from the past — from communities who already live that way?

That was the beginning of Future Property Group.

After more than three years of research and development, we created our Nature-Positive Design model — a way of building that gives more back to the planet than it takes. Homes that are regenerative, oxygen-positive and designed to heal land, people and ecosystems.

This is why we exist — to prove that the property industry doesn’t have to be part of the problem. It can be part of the solution.