The Voice winner Chris Sebastian buys new house to top off huge year
Singer-songwriter Chris Sebastian has had quite a year — winning The Voice, welcoming his first child, and now settling on his first home, writes Jonathan Chancellor.
NSW
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It’s been quite the year for singer songwriter Chris Sebastian. The younger brother of pop star Guy won The Voice and had his first child with wife Natasha, and they have now settled on their first home.
The family has spent $950,000 purchasing a four-bedroom house in Padstow Heights in Sydney’s southwest.
“As soon as The Voice finished, we decided we needed to get into the market”, Sebastian told The Sell.
“We’d been looking for so long, I’ve visited realestate.com.au every day for three years.”
Sebastian said he especially needed a recording studio.
And the house they bought was meant for them because it included a granny flat that could be converted into his workspace.
He’s quickly had the roof replaced, insulated it, and added double-glazed windows.
“I did a bit of carpentry straight out of school — I learned from my father,” Sebastian said.
Inside the house Sebastian started remodelling the kitchen the night they got the keys.
“The plans are pretty grand. I hope we’re here for a long while,” Sebastian said, adding that he plays golf at the nearby Barden Ridge.
The Sebastians snapped up the home a week before its scheduled auction through McGrath Revesby agents Matthew Laface and Heber De Carvalho.
It last sold at $860,000 in 2015, before its modernisation.
The $950,000 sale reflects annual growth rate of just over 2 per cent, in line with median house price growth in Padstow Heights, realestate.com.au data suggests.
The median house price for a four-bedroom home in Padstow Heights is $996,500.
The home, built in the 1970s, has four bedrooms across its two levels.
The second level can be fully self-contained, with its own kitchenette, bathroom, bedroom and rumpus space.
The ground level opens to a rear undercover deck which overlooks the swimming pool.
The home sits on a large 955sqm block with a deep garden lawn.
Sebastian first tried out for The Voice back in its first season in 2012 and was mentored by US singer Seal, however he was eliminated in the quarter-finals.
This year he was with Kelly Rowland’s team, and secured $100,000 and a recording contract with EMI Music on winning.
Immediately after he was announced the winner his first single with EMI Music, Bed for Two, was released. He has a new single coming out in February called Hard to Love.
The family had been renting in inner-western Sydney.
Brother Guy is based in Maroubra with his family, after moving from Clovelly. He, too, has a recording studio in his home.
With additional research by Joel Robinson
INDUSTRIOUS MOTORCYCLE CHAMP
Former motorcycle racing champion Wayne Gardner has been putting the finishing touches to his mixed-use light industrial warehouse project at Bellambi, north of Wollongong.
Gardner, who divides his time between Monaco and Sydney, has just returned, spending a fortnight in Hilton hotel quarantine and pleased to see the first stage of the development virtually finished.
The build commenced just before he had to travel to Europe during the emerging stages of the pandemic.
“Thankfully COVID-19 didn’t shut down the building trades,” he said.
“It will be a proud moment to be able to personally handover the keys to the purchasers.”
Stage one of the Bellambi Lane development comprises 18 storage units priced from $495,000.
With around half sold, there was another sale on Friday, with keen interest from tradies.
All up Gardner has permission to build 87 warehouses at the Bellambi Commercial Centre. Gardner won his 500cc World Championship in 1987, and his son, Remy, now races with 87 which dates back to a random number issued by his minibike club.
He advised it was the biggest yet of his projects, which have included a North Curl Curl residential site, a Darlinghurst shop top, and warehousing at Wetherill Park.
The latest sales timing capitalises on a lack of 4a zoned stock in the area, MMJ Commercial Wollongong agent Travis Machan said. He’s handling the sales in conjunction with Raine & Horne Wollongong agent Lynda Burnside.
The spaces start from 152sqm, which are split between a 96sqm ground floor space and 46sqm mezzanine, and can be used as office space or a warehouse facility.
Gardner’s development arm, Pacland Holdings, paid $3 million for the 2.67ha timber yard in 2006, when it briefly crossed his mind that the near-oceanfront holding could become a racetrack.
BARRON BACK IN SYDNEY MARKET
Stand-up comedian Carl Barron has quietly bought back into the Sydney apartment market.
Having sold both of his Potts Point apartments last year, Barron secured a penthouse off-market in Darling Point.
He has spent $4.7 million on the slick apartment of Jamey Colbert, the chief executive of kitchen appliances company Eurolinx Australia.
The whole-floor apartment, atop a 1930s Hampden Ave triplex, has two bedrooms, an additional office and a library.
A glass balustraded balcony flows from the open-plan living and dining area.
Barron, who retains an 8ha Southern Highlands hideaway at Mount Murray, had been set to perform his new show, Skating Rink for Flies, at the Sydney Lyric Theatre in September, but due to COVID-19 restrictions, it was moved to May next year.
Colbert had paid $2,475,000 for the apartment in 2012 when buying from KYKO Group founder Mary Wong-Jenkings, who’d paid $2,359,000 four years earlier.
The apartment complex has been tightly held as the unit below last sold for $1.85 million in 2006, and the garden apartment for $250,000 in 1986.
Barron sold his apartment in the Rockwall Apartments complex, Potts Point, for $5.5 million, and two months later secured the $2.8 million sale of an investment in the neighbouring Ikon.
RADIO SIDEKICK TRIES AGAIN IN BALMAIN
Fitzy and Wippa’s Nova sidekick Sarah McGilvray and her husband James Couche are trying again to sell their Balmain home, having moved to Turramurra.
McGilvray, a program director at Nova for five years, and Couche, an executive director at the international electrical system builder Thales Group, paid $2.04 million in 2017, when the Belle Property price guide had been $1.9 million.
They listed it initially in 2018, citing a desire to be closer to family, but failed to sell the Llewellyn St terrace at its $2.18 million asking price.
This time the guide was $1.85 million, however the three-bedroom Victorian terrace was pulled from yesterday’s auction.
The terrace retains its original features, including high ornate ceilings, timber floors and French doors.
The formal lounge and separate dining rooms both have fireplaces.
Ray White agents Karl Howard and Benjamin Martin have the listing.
McGilvray and Couche, who wed late last year, were introduced by Wippa at the races.
Earlier this year they paid $3.03 million for their Turramurra family home, seemingly taking advantage of the brief fall in consumer confidence during the worst fears of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Their purchase price was well under the $3.3 million quoted for the four-bedroom 1910 period home, Eden, which had spent nearly six months on the market.
It was sold by Michael Tidball and his wife Debra, who were off to Canberra where he has become chief of the Law Council of Australia.
The home was used by The Living Room on Network Ten, with chef Miguel Maestre cooking in its marble kitchen.
ROOSTER BUYS BACK IN MOSMAN
Sydney Roosters enforcer Jared Warea-Hargreaves and wife Chelsea have completed their lower north shore property portfolio reshuffle.
They’ve just spent $3.53 million on a cottage near the Mosman village.
The 1920s home awaits an extension on a 465sqm block with a mature frangipani tree.
The home last sold for $2.4 million in 2014.
It took just five days in August for their former Mosman home on Countess St to sell, through Michael Coombs, of LJ Hooker Ave at $5 million. They’d undertaken a $120,000 renovation after paying $3.1 million in 2017.
The couple had been keen to find their next project nearby because their eldest of two daughters starts school next year.
They also offloaded their Cammeray investment apartment, which had a $900,000 guide.
They had paid $750,000 in 2014 for the two-bedroom apartment in the Rosalind Gardens complex.
They most recently sought $600-a-week tenants, down on the $670-a-week of 2018.
JACOBY’S SALE DELAY
Media executive Anita Jacoby, a long-time Avalon Beach local, pulled her Pittwater boathouse-style holding from its scheduled auction yesterday.
The Riverview Road property, bought in 1998 for $950,000, retains $4.5 million price guidance from its McGrath listing agent James Baker.
The 936sqm double block comes with a cottage built out over the water on a sandstone pier, an irreplaceable relic of the 1940s extending 20m out from the shoreline, complete with a private sandy beach.
There have only been two owners since its construction.
Jacoby has owned many homes on the Pittwater waterfront over the years, including the $5.7 million modernist residence she bought with her husband five years ago.
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