Unreal Estate host Kate Langbroek’s turns ‘greatest idea ever’ into an iPhone app

WHEN Kate Langbroek decides she doesn’t want to call you, believe me — you won’t be talking to her. She developed an app so she doesn’t have to.

WHEN Kate Langbroek decides she doesn’t want to call you, believe me — you won’t be talking to her.

The TV presenter, nationally syndicated radio host and one time soapie scriptwriter developed her own app simply to avoid speaking to people on unwanted phone calls.
Known as Dubcall (on the Apple app store) it allows you to get straight through to someone’s voicemail without any chance of them picking up.

“I can’t say who it was but I had to call someone and I didn’t want to talk to them — I’m a chickenheart,” Langbroek says on her commute into her regular afternoon slot on KIIS. “I was saying a prayer ‘please let it go to voicemail’ and it did and it was top of my mind when I walked into the office. I told Sacha our producer about it and she said ‘That is the greatest idea ever. And we got some app designers in …. and now it exists”

Langbroek is also back on TV screens this week as the co-host — with Cam Knight — of Unreal Estate, which takes a look inside the country’s most breathtaking, luxurious and unique properties. She says she won’t be using the revenue from the app to buy her own mansion anytime soon.

“I can confidently assure you it (the revenue) wouldn’t even buy the letterboxes on one of these houses!” she laughs.

BEHIND THE ORANGE DOOR OF KATE LANGBROEK’S HOME

Kate Langbroek is innovative in her attempts to avoid calling people.

The properties featured include a seven-level beach house inspired by a whale, a rainforest retreat with a private disco and Queensland’s most expensive home, which has his and her helipads. She even took a trip across the ditch to poke about Megaupload founder Kim Dot Com’s extravagant New Zealand mansion which boasts 12 bedrooms, seven ensuites, a wine cellar, library, billiards room, present-wrapping room and three swimming pools. You’ll no doubt remember it from the news footage when it was raided in January 2012. “There were 70 police and SAS, full on, he was home with his little kids,” she says. “That house was fascinating, secret tunnels, a panic room. Amazing.”

The waterfront private estate known as Campbell Point House on the Bellerine Peninsula, Victoria, is featured in the second episode of Unreal Estate. Picture: Supplied / Channel 9

The holiday retreat for photographic artist Marian Drew and his brother Derek, near Gladstone on the east coast, is featured in Unreal Estate. Picture: Supplied / Channel 9

Chiropractor Kevin H Du-Val’s famous property Birrell Street Manor at Bondi is also shown on Unreal Estate, which starts on September 27.

Mandalay House, which has its own helipad and marina, at Airlie Beach in the Whitsundays is also visited. Picture: Supplied / Channel 9

But despite some superficial similarities, Unreal Estate is no Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, or MTV Cribs.

“It’s an Australian show so it’s not as full of bragging people,” she says. “Americans tend to be ‘look at my stuff, look how rich I am’. Australians don’t’ tend to be like that so to get access to some of these houses is really a privilege.”

While co-host Knight was struck with envy for the homeowners, Langbroek says she can’t think of anything worse than having to manage the large staff — and lack of privacy — that extravagant homes entail.

“It was a brilliant to experience them but I was very happy to walk through the door of my old farmhouse (in St Kilda). It did make me go, ‘Oh the joint could use a lick of paint’, which my husband has got onto …”

UNREAL ESTATE, TUESDAYS FROM SEPTEMBER 27, CHANNEL NINE, 8.40pm

Originally published as Unreal Estate host Kate Langbroek’s turns ‘greatest idea ever’ into an iPhone app