Swans co-captain scores with $6.4 million property play

As star Sydney Swans player Callum Mills celebrates his 26th birthday on Sunday, he will do so having recently taken the keys to a $6.4 million estate in Duffys Forest with his partner Tiffany Browne.

Callum Mills and Tiffany Browne paid $6.4 million for the two-hectare property.Credit: Mark Kolbe

Records show the two-hectare property is the first joint purchase by the young couple, but by no means the first foray into the property game for either of them, or their families.

The Swans’ co-captain lives in Paddington, where home is a two-bedroom terrace he bought in 2018 for $1.74 million. His father Darren Mills is renowned in high-end property circles as the head of luxury home design and construction firm Cadence & Co.

Browne is a long-time Northern Beaches local and co-director of the Browne family’s extensive property investment company that is headed by PharmaCare owner Toby Browne.

Callum Mills and Browne declined to comment on their recent purchase, but settlement on the three-bedroom house was lodged on official property records the day after his stellar performance in last weekend’s match against Hawthorn.

Fellow Swans co-captain Luke Parker was also outstanding last weekend, fresh from the sale of his Matraville duplex he built with his interior designer wife Kate Lawrence-Parker for about $3 million. But the Swans’ star performer on the field and in real estate is Buddy Franklin who with his wife, model Jesinta Franklin set a record for Queensland’s Gold Coast hinterland late last year when they bought Villa Casa in Reedy Creek for $8.75 million.

Jesinta and ‘Buddy’ Franklin are the Swans’ best on ground performers when it comes to owning properties.

Star of Callala Beach

Less than a year after Matt Bekier stepped down as chief of The Star casino, in the wake of damning findings by the NSW gambling regulator into its anti-money-laundering controls, no less, he and his wife Melinda have listed their designer getaway at Callala Beach for $6.5 million to $7 million.

You’d think that Bekier’s reduced work demands might mean he has more time to spend at the seriously gorgeous retreat at Jervis Bay, but the sale was because, he said in a text, “with five children fully grown we are looking to spend more time travelling overseas”.

The four-bedroom, five-bathroom residence on the beachfront at Callala Beach was built seven years ago.Credit: Domain

The couple built the four-bedroom, two-storey house about seven years ago, having purchased the site in 2014 for $1.1 million, and have never rented it out.

Beachfront blocks tend to start at $3.5 million nowadays, even before the first builder is called in, prompting the record-setting guide by Darren Curtis, of Christie’s International.

When the Bekiers aren’t travelling, their Sydney home is a landmark converted warehouse in Newtown, for which they paid $5.8 million in 2020.

Randwick’s new heights

In Randwick the Victorian Italianate residence Allowah owned by JP Morgan Australia’s advisory board member David Garrard and his wife Sheila is set to hit the market with a $15 million guide that at that level will smash the local suburb records.

The Italianate Victorian manor Allowah is again set to claim Randwick’s record house price.

The grand 1880s-built residence reset the suburb high when it last sold in 2001 for $4.3 million, and there’s been a renovation by Humphrey and Edwards architectural practice in the years since to bring the five-bedroom home up to contemporary standards, complete with garden studio, synthetic grass tennis court and heated pool.

Listed with Savills’ Martin Schiller, it is expected to top the $9.525 million high set last year when the Federation house Wirringulla sold to barrister Ian Hemmings SC.

Mosman-Berrima swap

The Berrima property Bellevue sold for $9.3 million to Vicki Albert, of the Albert music family.Credit: Domain

LaserClinics co-founder Alistair Champion looked to have scored a good deal on his Berrima holiday home when he sold it two years ago for $6.5 million, but perhaps he jumped the sales gun given it has resold for $9.3 million to Mosman’s Vicki Albert, wife of David Albert, of the Albert music family.

David Albert, of the music publishing family, looks to be swapping Mosman for Berrima.

Cashing in on the Southern Highlands boom is retired stockbroker Graeme Cutler and his wife Suzanne, who may well have crossed paths with the Alberts on the Hume Highway given the Cutlers are returning to Mosman and recently purchased $7.75 million digs.

Before the Alberts purchased “Bellevue” through Dunne Real Estate’s Sandie Dunne, they sold in Mosman for $9.9 million, making a decade capital gain of $1 million in the year they owned it.