Sydney celebrities spending millions on property portfolios
From ball-basher to cash-splasher, Dave Warner has built up a considerable $8 million Sydney portfolio – just one of many Australian sport stars, models and politicians with a passion for collecting investment property.
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Australian sports stars, models, fashion designers and politicians are buying up big with a passion for collecting investment property away from their pursuits in the spotlight.
But it is our cricketers who pad up as biggest as property investors, led by David Warner and his ironwoman wife, Candice.
The couple have focused their property portfolio in Sydney’s coastal east, especially around their home turf of Maroubra.
They have five properties that cost $8 million, including their $3.9 million knockdown-rebuild holding overlooking Lurline Bay.
Their intended oceanfront abode remains under construction.
Former Australia captain Steve Smith is a close second. He pinpointed the Balmain peninsula with three holdings costing $4 million, with property also at Coogee and Sans Souci.
Star paceman Mitchell Starc is also catching up quickly with his northern beaches portfolio.
Starc has a $1.625 million investment in Killarney Heights, a $1.95 million contemporary house in Collaroy Plateau and a $1.55 million block of land in Forestville where he’s built a Metricon home.
In 2015 he and wife, fellow cricketer Alyssa Healy, also spent $5.235 million on a North Curl Curl home that Jennifer Hawkins and her builder husband Jake Wall built.
When Jennifer Hawkins gets to sell her recently listed $20 million home on Pittwater, she will just own the one property, an investment at Minmi that cost her $345,000 in 2008.
Hawkins says she will buy an acreage near Avoca in the Central Coast as the new family retreat.
The property-flipping supermodel had previously flipped houses in Coogee and the northern beaches before building the Newport home.
She sold her Merewether investment, the first property she ever bought for $469,000 in 2006, for $782,000 in 2017.
According to ATO statistics, around 70 per cent of the 2.1 million Australians with rental properties have just the one investment.
The RBA noted yesterday that investors were still to return to the emerging buoyant market.
And some are exiting.
Former NRL star Jarryd Hayne got to amass a $5 million portfolio, but that’s now been whittled down to just comprise a property in Umina Beach where his mother lives and two apartments he bought off the plan in Parramatta a few years ago.
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He offloaded his Darlinghurst investment terrace last weekend after asking $2.2 million, and two years ago sold his former Paddington investment property for $2.85 million.
Manly’s Trbojevic brothers Jake and Tom, who recently signed bumper deals to keep them in Sea Eagles colours, each have a couple of apartments on the northern beaches peninsula, that cost a combined $3.1 million.
They each bought house and land packages in the same Warriewood estate last year.
NRL legend Johnathan Thurston has long held on to his Leichhardt apartment bought for $370,000 when he was a Bulldog back in 2005, but his expanded portfolio is in north Queensland.
He has six properties and recently spent $850,000 on an investment house down the street from where he resides.
Model Rachael Finch and her dancer husband Michael Miziner, who currently call Waterloo home, expanded their portfolio beyond Sydney to the Gold Coast.
They own three investment properties in Southport. The couple also own commercial real estate in Alexandria in Sydney.
Fashion doyenne Collette Dinnigan has had huge success since she turned her focus to property.
In the past five years she has bought and sold over $50 million worth of real estate.
She managed to sell her former Watsons Bay home for $9 million in 2016, having paid $6.5 million just 18 months earlier.
She had even greater returns in the Southern Highlands, paying $4.5 million for Springfield Farm in 2015 before selling 18 months later for $7.25 million.
Dinnigan still retains a Highlands bolthole, a $7 million Darling Point property, and property in Paddington.
Her most recent acquisition, a clifftop in Rosedale on the South Coast, has become a popular $285 a night Airbnb.
Her and her entrepreneurial husband Bradley Cocks are currently living in Rome. They have been restoring a 100-year-old farmhouse in Puglia which will become a short term rental offering.
Having made his billion through technology, young richlister billionaire Mike Cannon Brookes has a property portfolio which includes five properties in Double Bay including Sydney’s record-setting $100 million waterfront Fairwater.
He owns two farms in the Southern Highlands, and an $8.7 million Palm Beach weekender.
While not in the same league as the inveterate buyer Ellen DeGeneres and expatriate actor wife Portia de Rossi, our Hollywood stars sit comfortably among the high-end property investor class.
The Hemsworths are well-documented big spenders around Byron Bay, albeit for family accommodation.
Ever since Thor star Chris Hemsworth and his wife Elsa Pataky spent $7 million in 2014, the family have poured $17 million into real estate acquisitions.
Russell Crowe still owns his abode on the Woolloomooloo Wharf, as well as his large 400 hectare farm in Nana Glen near Coffs Harbour, which came under threat from massive bushfires last week.
He sold a block of flats in Kingsford for $3.2 million which he was letting his former 30 Odd Foot of Grunts bandmates to live in rent-free, and a Surry Hills commercial block that was the home to 98 Riley Street Gym and offices.
Cate Blanchett and husband Andrew Upton, who offloaded their main piece of real estate, the Hunters Hill trophy Bulwarra for $18 million in 2017, still retain a bolthole in The Astor on Macquarie Street.
They recently listed their waterfront at Berowra Creek on the Hawkesbury River.
Politicians are among the biggest property portfolio holders in the country.
Dr David Gillespie, the federal member for Lyne, owns at last count 18 properties.
John Barilaro, the deputy premier, owns five investment properties including a B&B in Corang.
Independent Joe McGirr owns seven investment properties, including one in France.