The Sell: Reduced price hits right note for buyers of Nat Bass’ former matrimonial home
Entertainer Natalie Bassingthwaighte and her musician former husband, Cameron McGlinchey, have secured an offer for their former Ewingsdale home after they reduced the price.
NSW
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Entertainer Natalie Bassingthwaighte and her musician former husband, Cameron McGlinchey, have secured an offer for their former Ewingsdale home after they reduced the price.
It was initially listed in August, with $3m to $3.25m hopes, through Su Reynolds and Renee Schofield, of First National. The price was later adjusted from $2.7m to $2.9m.
The sale price of the Byron Bay hinterland property – which comprises two single-level buildings, a four-bedroom primary residence and a studio – has not been revealed.
Set on 4758sq m, its grounds include a four-car garage and workshop.
The pair paid $2.15m in late 2020 for the 1985-built home, which was repainted after a kitchen refurbishment and renovations to the alfresco area, pool and deck.
Since being on the market, the realestate.com.au listing has had 6895 page views.
The Plantation Drive sale comes 14 months after Bassingthwaighte and McGlinchey announced they had split after 13 years. They had been bandmates in the band Rogue Traders before marrying in 2011.
The house was bought shortly after they sold their $4m Brighton residence, in bayside Melbourne, during the early stages of the pandemic, in 2020.
The former Neighbours star, who is in a relationship with Pip Loth, is currently writing a book with Pantera Publishing.
In an interview last month, she said of the book: “It’s a lot, at times, but being vulnerable has to take courage, and it can hurt and it can be torturous at times but, at the same time, you are evolving as a person, helping yourself and then, in turn, helping others.”
Raising money for the Black Dog Institute, Bassingthwaighte recently competed with sister Melinda Sheldrick in The Amazing Race Australia Celebrity Edition.
STAR COUPLE FLYING HIGH WITH TOP-FLOOR UNIT BUY
NRL-NRLW glamour couple, Manly Sea Eagle Tommy Talau and Sydney Rooster Jess Sergis, have bought their first home together.
Their Maroubra purchase seems to suggest Sergis won the battle to buy in her heartland, rather than on the Northern Beaches.
The couple have spent $1.29m on a two-bedroom apartment not far from the north end of the beach. The top floor apartment was trading for the first time in over two decades, having sold for $325,000 in 2001.
Offering views from Botany Bay to Maroubra Beach, the space has a balcony off its open plan living and dining area.
The block of 12, marketed as having solid double-brick construction, dates back to the late 1960s.
The unit had previously been an investment for several years, most recently in 2023 when it was available for $775 a week.
PropTrack calculates the median price for two bedroom apartments at $1,050,000 with a typical $800 a week rental. Maroubra has seen an annual compound growth rate of nine per cent for apartments.
The couple went public in January when Sergis shared a loved-up photo of the two recreating the famous pottery embrace between Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore from the 1990 film, Ghost.
Talau, 24, started his career at Wests Tigers before joining Manly this year.
“There was more than the odd eyebrow raised when Anthony Seibold signed the former Wests Tigers player, but at $250,000 a season, it was money well spent,” wrote The Oracle Brian Melkie in his recent listing of the top NRL best buys of 2024, published this month in The Sunday Telegraph.
The winger played in 23 games this year, scoring 18 tries along with five try assists.
Sergis, 27, has been at the Roosters since 2021, having previously spent three years at St George Illawarra. Earlier this month Sergis was named the first RLPA NRLW Player of the Year.
Sergis retains an apartment in her hometown of Wollongong, having paid $612,000, a week out from her 24th birthday in 2021.
The Wollongong apartment, with two bedrooms and two balconies, was listed for rent at $550 a week last December.
MLC EXITS PROPERTY GAME WITH SWIPE AT LABOR MONOPOLY MINDSET
The new quasi pro-tenant rental laws, which passed through the NSW state parliament mid-week, are already prompting landlords to sell up.
The troubling occurrence emerged during the Legislative Council debate, when independent MLC Rod Roberts advised he had sold an investment property from his own portfolio.
Property records revealed it was a property in Goulburn that fetched $1.1m in early October through Barry McEntee of First National.
It was a small block of three two-bedroom units plus a one one-bedder which Roberts and wife Lynette had acquired for $325,000 in 2004, after he had retired from the police force.
The Combermere St units, upgraded with modern kitchens and bathrooms, have a $64,480 gross annual income.
Roberts told his colleagues he was minded to sell down his portfolio because aspects of the legislation reflected “the slow socialist march of the Labor left eroding people’s property rights”.
“This is not a game of Monopoly with the little guy in the top hat and tails smoking a dirty big Havana .... these are mum-and-dad workers who risk it all by borrowing extra money, usually against equity in their own home. They run the risk because they want to save for their future so that they are not a burden on society,” he said.
“We need to encourage landlords. We need to keep them in the market. We also need to strike a sensible balance between tenants’ rights and landlords’ rights. I completely understand that. However, this Bill misses the mark.”
Roberts had told 2GB broadcaster Ray Hadley he was most concerned about the new section 87E (3) rule surrounding investors who secure vacant possession as they intend to sell, but then fail to find a buyer.
“So your poor old mum-and-dad investors say all right, we’ll rent it back out again, but no, this Act says you can’t.”
Desirous landlords can’t re-let for six months, unless approved by the secretary of the department.
IT’S LUXURY LIVING AT LOVE ISLAND BACKDROP
Amileka, the Byron Bay hinterland trophy home that once featured as the backdrop in reality TV show Love Island Australia, is for sale.
The strikingly simple, contemporary homestead on 10ha, at Federal, comes with an $8m to $9m price guide through McGrath Byron Bay agents Nick Dunn and Ollie Charkos.
The 2008-built home hosted season 3 of the show, on Nine Now, which was won by Mitch Hibberd and Tina Provis in 2017.
The Blackbean Lane home – designed by architect Sharon Fraser – has five bedrooms, a sunken lounge, a kitchen with honed concrete floors, and glass-wrapped interiors.
The white box minimalist architectural-style home won the Australian Institute of Architects (NSW Country Division) Architecture Award, after being built in 2006 for Fraser’s partner, Steve Esson.
The founders of The Farm enterprise, Tom Lane, the Oroton fashion empire scion, and stylist wife Emma bought Amileka for $4m in 2011.
It was next traded in 2015 to the Kingscliff-based Johnson family for $3.5m after more than a year on the market, through then-agent Nicolette Van Wijngaarden, of Unique Estates.
The property next sold in 2022 when Mikaela Lancaster, the Spotify Australia managing director, and husband Mark Britt, founder of video-streaming platform Iflix, bought it for $9.5m through Mr Dunn – some four months after it was listed with $11.5m to $12.5m hopes.
It is the most expensive of the 19 Federal properties listed on realestate.com.au.
NAGI’S SALE PLANS ARE OFF THE TABLE
Nagi Maehashi, the international cookbook author, has scrapped plans to sell her Hunters Hill home. She has instead embarked on $950,000 worth of renovations to the 1883 sandstone house that cost $7m last year.
The new garaging and rear renovations are by Cradle Design.
The much-traded picturesque Victorian Gothic-style home was built for the Lenehan family. They held it until the early 1920s when it became the home of the Hayne family who renamed it Daybreak, dropping College View, which had been a reference to their local school Riverview.
The home, which featured in the 2000 Rachel Griffiths movie Me Myself I, sits on 1550sqm parklike grounds, with a heritage Moreton Bay fig tree, a solar-heated pool, spa and studio.
Its previous owners include Jacob’s Creek winemaker Philip Laffer and wife Beverley, medico Paul Bannon and wife Erin, and the retired Saatchi executive Michael Rollins and his wife Pauline.
Maehashi, a former Brookfield Multiplex executive, had previously resided in Mona Vale, where she sold for $6m.
Her latest book, RecipeTin Eats: Tonight has sold over 78,000 copies, which ranks as the highest first week of sales for a non-fiction title since Scott Pape’s The Barefoot Investor in 2018, according to Nielsen BookData.
PRICE TAKES A LITTLE DIP
The repricing of swimming legend Ian Thorpe’s Woollahra townhouse continues ahead of its November 7 auction.
The initial $3.5 million Ray White guidance for the three-level townhouse was dropped to $3 million in midweek.
Thorpe, who was in the Channel 9 broadcast team at the Paris Olympics, placed a $3.95 million vendor bid at its auction in September last year.
The townhouse was bought in 2017 for $2.75 million.
DECLARING A SALE QUICKLY
It took just eight days for NSW cricket captain Moises Henriques to find a buyer for his former matrimonial home in Clovelly.
Listed at $7.5 million guide, it fetched $8.3 million-plus.
He built it with his ex-wife, one-time KIIS FM newsreader Krista Thomas, in 2019 after paying $3.125 million for an original 1930s home a year prior.
The contemporary home has five bedrooms, with one used as a home office.
LONE BIDDER FOR TERRACE
There was just the one bidder when influencer Nadia Fairfax and her financier husband Michael Wayne put their Paddington terrace to auction.
They raised their offer from $5.8 million to $6 million, which had been the guide from Raine & Horne’s Samuel Schumann.
The couple updated the five-bedroom, three-bathroom 1880s Bent St home, Cawdor, after buying it for $4.05 million in 2020.
Got a property news tip? Email jonathan.chancellor@news.com.au
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