The Sell: Former Dragon selling home between two beaches
Former St George Illawarra Dragons forward Trent Merrin has listed his Shellharbour home for auction and Better Homes and Gardens celebrity gardener Charlie Albone is parting with his home at Ourimbah.
NSW
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Former St George Illawarra Dragons forward Trent Merrin has listed his Shellharbour home.
The former Origin player has listed the home for March 2 auction through Matt Hutchinson at First National Coastside with an initial $2.3m price guide.
Merrin bought the four-bedroom, three-bathroom house which spans three levels in 2017 for $1.3m after his break-up with surfer Sally Fitzgibbons.
The two-storey semi-detached home sits on a 359 sqm block.
Merrin, who played for the Dragons in the 2010 NRL premiership team, has had a wellbeing back office role with the football club. He recently launched Azure Partners which is an career advisory and mentoring service for current and former NRL players.
His social media describes himself as a proud father, former professional athlete and cryptocurrency enthusiast. He periodically post photos to his 44,000 Instagram followers when he is with the two sons he had from his relationship with Jessica Watson.
Recently Merrin‘s mother Karen secured a Barrack Point home bought at auction for $2.6m which was within its price guidance of $2.5m to $2.75m given by Richard Cooper from Illawarra Estate Agents.
The two-storey, four-bedroom brick home with ocean views sits on 1,012 sqm holding, positioned between two beaches in the seaside Shellharbour suburb.
Meanwhile, another former Dragons player, Trent Barrett, and his wife, Kylie, have yet to secure the sale of their nearby luxury oceanfront Barrack Point home which was listed with a $7.5m-plus price guide last October through Ray White agent Amanda Bonnici.
The five-bedroom, five-bathroom Hamptons-style home comes with a direct beach access gateway from its i740qm holding.
HARD-PRESSED TO FIND A BETTER GARDEN
Better Homes and Gardens celebrity gardener Charlie Albone and his wife, interior designer Juliet Love, have listed their longtime Ourimbah home on the NSW Central Coast.
The 2.07ha property has been listed by McGrath Gosford agents Peter Morris and Nate Waters with a $3m to $3.2m price guidance.
The four-bedroom, three-bathroom single-level English cottage-style house sits on a circular driveway in privacy deep behind its grand entry gate. It comes with a separate self-contained unit that includes a bedroom and kitchenette.
There are garden alcoves, a stunning wisteria-covered arbour, fruit trees, plus garden beds for vegetables. There is a feature dry-stone wall fire pit built by Scottish stonemason Callum Grey for the Chelsea Flower Show.
The five paddocks come with animal shelters, plumbed water troughs and a three-stall stable. The Ourimbah Creek Rd property has town water, plus 100,000-litre tanks.
The grounds have a saltwater pool.
The Ourimbah acreage was bought in 2012 for $840,000 with Love’s family having had a holiday house at Bateau Bay, so they knew the district.
Ourimbah’s top acreage sale sits at $3,725,000 for a 13.93ha Dog Trap Rd holding with a six-bedroom house, which sold in 2021.
There has been a $2.3m sale of 12ha Bumbles Creek Rd acreage last month with a four-bedroom 1940s house overlooking paddocks, with two dams, plus horse stables.
In late 2019, the couple, who have two sons, bought a two-storey red-brick semi in Maroubra for $2.355m, which has been transformed into a weatherboard coastal look. They secured permission in 2021 for $143,000 in works, including a pool and spa, on the 316sq m holding.
Albone quit Foxtel’s Selling Houses Australia in early 2020 to join the BH&G team, replacing fellow celebrity landscaper Jason Hodges.
After he arrived in Australia from England, Albone met Love in 2009 when they both worked on a lifestyle show called The Party Garden. They were engaged within 10 months, and married on the NSW South Coast just six months later.
The green thumb does a Listnr podcast, That’s How We Grow.
SINGO’S JUST ABOUT READY TO SELL ‘HEROIC’ SITE
Retired adman John Singleton has been giving thought to selling Paddington Court, one of the last traces of his time in advertising.
The property was bought in 1976 to accommodate the ad agency SPASM (Singleton Palmer and Strauss McAllan), which traded at the premises until the sale of the business. The property then became the creative hub of the advertising agency Mojo.
Set amid Paddington’s pricey residential terraces, the commercial building features a large quadrangle with willows and holds the Bonython Cafe.
The four-building complex runs between 120B Underwood St and 54 Victoria St.
Singleton and fellow adman Duncan McAllan paid $300,000 through their joint venture vehicle Ringo and The Baron Pty Ltd to art gallery owner Kym Bonython, who was moving back to Adelaide.
At 1022sq m, the Bonython Galleries was the then largest commercial gallery in Australia, with The Bulletin suggesting back then that it was “heroically proportioned”.
It had previously been a bottle cleaning plant and bakery.
The Bonython gallery was part of the emerging bohemia in Paddington as artists converged on the slum suburb following the opening of Rudy Komon’s gallery in 1959.
Komon’s gallery was followed by Betty O’Neill’s gallery The Hungry Horse on Windsor St, Senta Taft’s Galleries Primitif on Jersey Rd, Gallery A on Gipps St and, of course, the enduring Barry Stern Galleries on Glenmore Rd.
Singleton and McAllan, who is no longer a co-owner, added a fourth property in 1977, which was bought from the legendary arts patron Annette Dupree for $37,500.
The consolidated battleaxe property was passed in at $2m at a 1991 auction.
Meanwhile, the Parterre antique store premises on the Ocean and Queen St corner in Woollahra is for sale for the first time in 40 years.
18HA FARM RETREAT IN A LEAGUE OF ITS OWN
South Sydney Rabbitohs icon George Piggins and his wife Nolene have sold their Burrawang farm retreat, Cadwarri, for $3.1m after 38 years of ownership.
The 18ha Southern Highlands holding was sold through Ray White agents Hugh and Charlotte Hanrahan, who had it listed with a $3m to $3.3m guide.
The South Coogee couple, who bought the property for $177,000 in 1986, sold it to Andrew and Alison Maher from Figtree.
The Illawarra Highway property boasts 15 paddocks and four dams. Its 12 horse stables complex was bigger than the three-bedroom, two-bathroom 1970s cottage, which has views over Wingecarribee Reservoir.
George, the Mascot junior-turned-Rabbitohs great, played 118 games for Souths between 1967 and 1978. Born in October 1944, he was the Dally M Coach of the Year in 1986 and 1989.
The tough hooker was also to become club president when, following their exclusion from the National Rugby League at the end of the Super League war, Piggins led the battle for re-inclusion in 2001.
The Piggins family recently listed their Mascot cottage after 11 decades of ownership. It dates back to wicker worker George Leslie Piggins – the Souths legend’s grandfather – and wife Elizabeth, who bought the 702sq m holding for £66 in 1914.
It then became the home of their son Wally and his wife Minnie, and all their seven children – Albert, Jeff, George, Wal, Stan, Kim and Lyn – who personally held the ownership title on its listing.
TELEVISION TAKEOVER DEAL REVEALED
The purchaser of the Double Bay terrace of television power couple Peter Stefanovic and Sylvia Jeffries has emerged as Banks (Hongfei) Yao, an emerging Chinese-born buyers agent who heads the Barangaroo-based Riki Group with wife Miki Tang.
The semi-detached Epping Rd abode was snapped up last August through TRG agent Oliver Lavers, who has since sold a further two homes on the road.
It fetched $5.32 million, according to the recent settlement paperwork.
Stefanovic, who presents First Edition on Sky News Australia, and Jeffreys, co-host of Today Extra on Channel 9, had bought the four-bedroom, two-bathroom 2005-built home for $2.7 million in 2016, so were just shy of doubling their investment.
The couple have since bought a four-bedroom, three-bathroom Bronte home for $6.35 million, which they snapped up last October on delayed settlement terms after just a week on the market.
There were 2014 works by Nick Bell Architects and Kate Bell Design that retained the double-fronted Californian bungalow facade, but added a rear contemporary space under a folded zinc roof with teak cladding. Its builders nicknamed the interestingly shaped roof “the fighter jet”.
PropTrack puts the four-bedroom median at $5.6 million in Double Bay and $5.825 million in Bronte.
KEEPING UP WITH JONES
Broadcaster Alan Jones has sold his South Brisbane investment apartment for $1.355 million.
The two-bedroom, two-bathroom 190sq m two-level Lower River Terrace apartment cost $200,000 in 1987.
Elisa Wellington of Property Services secured the sale in the Thiess Watkins-built Riverview Gardens complex.
The 1985 complex comes with a pool, spa, barbecue area and a full-size tennis court.
ANOTHER BID TO FINGER OUT SALE
Socialite Sanchia Brahimi has relisted her third floor apartment in Woolloomooloo’s Finger Wharf after a string of unsuccessful campaigns.
It has been rescheduled for an April 4 auction with $9.8 million guidance having once had $10.5 million hopes.
Brahimi purchased it in 2021 for $11.7 million from Lisa Corban, wife of car dealer Michael Corban.
The apartment comes with 300sq m of internal space.
MARAYONG HITS NEW HEIGHTS
Marayong has a new suburb record.
A Quakers Rd new-build sold for $1.827 million at a McGrath Blacktown auction last weekend conducted by Peter Mochrie.
Agent Joel Hollings had the listing of the five-bedroom, three-bathroom house that comes with study.
The 737sq m holding came with an attached two-bedroom, one-bathroom granny flat.
Got a property news tip? Email jonathan.chancellor@news.com.au
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