The Sell: Bulldog Liam Knight surprises with Vaucluse listing
Sidelined NRL prop Liam Knight looks set to take a loss on his Vaucluse townhouse investment, listing it at $1.55m after paying $1,625,000 early last year.
NSW
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Sidelined NRL prop Liam Knight looks set to take a loss on his Vaucluse townhouse investment.
Knight, who is contracted to the Canterbury Bulldogs, bought the three-level townhouse for $1,625,000 early last year when he was still at the Rabbitohs.
For a while, South Sydney enforcer Jai Arrow was a flatmate.
Following Knight’s late-season departure to Canterbury, the townhouse was offered as a $1110-a-week tenancy.
Now the Old South Head Rd home, which has three bedrooms, one bathroom and a courtyard garden, has a $1.55m asking price through PPD agents Alexander Phillips and Thomas Fuller.
The pricing is somewhat surprising, given PropTrack calculates the median apartment price has risen 13 per cent in the past 12 months, based on 71 sales. The median for all Vaucluse apartments currently sits at $1,535,000, and even higher at $1,875,000 for three-bedroom offerings.
It suggests Knight, who has done modelling shoots for the Australian men’s streetwear fashion brand La Haute, may have overpaid to buy into the block of nine that sits close to Christison Park.
Built in the early 2000s, it had previously sold at $1.18m in 2014.
CoreLogic’s recent Pain & Gain report, which looked at short-term, loss-making resale conditions in the final quarter of 2023, revealed just 3.9 per cent of transactions in the Woollahra municipality recorded a loss at a $83,000 median cost.
Knight, who has only played twice for the Bulldogs this season and is contracted to the end of the year, sits among the many newcomers at Belmore, with Canterbury having been the most aggressive club in the player market over the past year. Knight has been dating Channel 9 sports presenter Danika Mason, who sought to find a buyer for her Maroubra investment apartment earlier this year.
It was bought for $640,000 in 2017. The renovated one-bedroom apartment has more recently gone up for rent at $600 a week through David Ibanez of Belle Property.
It was previously for rent at $550 a week in early 2022.
ADGEMIS’S RENT RIDDLE MAY SOON BE SOLVED
While his vast hospitality empire remains excruciatingly on the brink of refinancing, swarthy pub owner Jon Adgemis still gives his residence as a pricey Point Piper harbourfront property.
But it is under interesting occupancy terms. The abode, last sold in 2013 for $33.5m to interests associated with Jerry Yafu Qiu, head of Chinese textile giant Shandong Ruyi, is the striking home which singer Elton John dubbed “the Bang & Olufsen house” given its hi-fi speakers resemblance.
After several internal transfers, the title sits with Qiu’s daughter Chenran Qiu and her husband Jerry Liu.
Last month Adgemis told an unusually gossipy Street Talk finance column at Nine Entertainment that he has a rent-free arrangement with its owners, forking out for ongoing maintenance.
Full details on Adgemis’s house guest arrangement will likely emerge when Liu fronts the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal next month in a skirmish with the NSW Chief Commissioner of State Revenue. There was certainly maintenance being done when The Sell peered through the gates on the day after his quiet midweek 46th birthday.
Adgemis, once credited as challenging Justin Hemmes and Stu Laundy as a leading playboy pub baron, shares the abode with model actor Megan MacKenzie.
Adgemis had previously been renting on the Rose Bay foreshore from miner Champion de Crespigny.
Adgemis’s PHG has a portfolio of 22 properties in Sydney and Melbourne, bought with the aim of upgrading their food and accommodation offerings. But while trying to refinance the multi-lender $500m debt some have signalled their desire to sell some property.
Savills have listed the Manor House, in Darling-hurst and the Empire Hotel, Annandale.
NAT BASS AND EX RENT OUT FAMILY HOME
Singer Natalie Bassingthwaighte and her estranged musician husband Cameron McGlinchy have put their former Byron Bay home up for lease.
It came with five bedrooms across two single-level buildings around a pool in 4760sq m semi-rural grounds at Ewingsdale.
Bassingthwaighte and McGlinchy initially sought $2850 a week, which was reduced to $2500 just before it recently came down from rental sites.
There was the option to lease it furnished or unfurnished.
PropTrack noted the Ewingsdale rental market has strength, but not the sales market. The median rental price sits at $1325 a week, up 32 per cent annually after 39 lettings, while its $2,539,500 median price is down 23 per cent from 10 sales over a year.
The couple had been co-parenting at the family compound which they bought for $2.15m in 2020, when they made the move from Melbourne.
They had sold their former 1907 home in Brighton for $4m, having paid $2,525,000 for the property in 2012 shortly after the sale of Bassingthwaighte’s Elizabeth Bay apartment for $830,000.
The couple, who wed in 2011, had been together since 2006 when they met while in the band Rogue Traders.
Bassingthwaighte last year publicly announced her relationship with her new partner, stage manager at the Queensland Theatre Company Pip Loth, who identifies as non-binary.
Got a property news tip? Email jonathan.chancellor@news.com.au
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