The Sell: Alex Cullen’s move to Melbourne prompts Summer Hill rental offering
Former Today sports presenter Alex Cullen has listed his Summer Hill home for rental following his relocation to Melbourne.
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Former Today sports presenter Alex Cullen has listed his Summer Hill home for rental following his relocation to Melbourne.
The ex-Channel 9 host will shortly turn up as the sports jock on Christian O’Connell’s Gold 104.3 breakfast radio show, which recently lost its top FM ranking.
Cullen’s charming 1912 Queen Anne Federation home, Kironga, has been on the market for only a week, but has already seen its asking rent trimmed from $1800 a week to $1700.
The four-bedroom, two-bathroom home features original charm from its living and entertaining spaces to its rear garden with lemon and avocado trees. Cullen and his Nine Entertainment journalist wife Bonnie paid $1.9m in 2020 when the house on 556sq m was marketed as a “highly rewarding refurbishment project”.
“This family-friendly home is nestled in a highly sought-after pocket,” the Harris Tripp leasing agent Kristian Lovicu advises in the marketing.
The property management department has been struggling with a nearby luxury five-bedroom, two-bathroom Rosemount Ave bungalow that is still on the market after 75 days, according to Cotality, at $1750 a week. It sold last year at $5.4m. PropTrack data shows just 10 four-bedroom lettings in the past year with a 33 days’ median time on market.
Cullen was let go by Nine in January for briefly accepting a $50,000 gift from the network’s The Block billionaire, and Melbourne raffle ticket seller, Adrian “Lambo Guy” Portelli.
The $50,000 was publicly offered by Portelli for the first TV journalist to call him McLaren Guy, not Lambo Guy.
O’Connell announced Cullen’s hiring on air, joking that “Channel 9 might go ‘listen, we can’t have that’, but commercial breakfast radio, we are very much up for payola. Come on in. Don’t worry Alex, you’ve found a home here, my friend”.
“ I called him out of the blue a few weeks ago and we hit it off like old mates,” O’Connell said. “He came over for a rigorous interview with me, that to onlookers may have looked like a long lunch with flowing red wine, but we bonded over being dads and a shared love of storytelling and how sport could be delivered on my show.”
Cullen advised his recent appointment was “such an exciting next chapter for me”.
‘I actually started my career in radio, so to be coming back to it and joining a show that’s so loved and so full of heart is a real thrill,” he said.
“I can’t wait to be on air with Christian, Pats and Rio, and to get to know Melbourne.
“My family and I are thrilled to be making it our new home.”
DJ TIGERLILY SET TO FIND HER FAMILY PARADISE
Dara Hayes Lawson, better known as DJ Tigerlily, is selling her Matraville investment property as she seeks to secure a family home.
The Paradise DJ, who shot to international stardom after a chance encounter with Dutch DJ Tiesto, now has two children with her husband Scott Lawson, who works in construction.
They married in 2022, with Vogue Australia reporting it was a retro, tulle-filled affair with a Slim Aarons, Palm Springs-inspired aesthetic.
The proceeds of the August 9 auction will help them buy a family home.
Sydney Sotheby’s agent Brooke Marshall has the listing of the investment that Hayes bought in 2018 for $1.8m.
The freshly painted five-bedroom, two-bathroom house set on a Torrens St holding has a $2.3m buyers guide.
It sits on a 525sq m block with an established rear garden featuring fruit trees. Marshall calls it “potential-packed”.
It has the option to be opened up at the rear to the garden or adding a second storey.
Its market rental has been suggested as $1300 to $1400 a week.
PropTrack puts the Matraville house median at $2,565,000 after 84 sales in the past year.
It calculates a 2.6 per cent rental yield as houses in Matraville typically rent out for $1425 a week.
Marshall also sold the former Maroubra duplex of Hayes last year for $1,908,000. It had been bought for $1.31m in 2016.
Known for her vibrant blue hair when deejaying across the globe, Hayes went to music school from four, and began deejaying when she was 19. She was runner-up in the 2011 Your Shot DJ competition.
At 21, she was spotted by Tiesto at a festival in her modified Acca Dacca shirt, with its AC/DC logo rearranged to say “ACID”.
PIER APPROVAL AS FRENCH COUPLE’S APARTMENT SELLS
Former Rio Tinto chief Jean-Sebastien Jacques and his wife Muriel Demarcus have sold at Walsh Bay.
Spanning 110sq m, the fifth-floor two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment was marketed by local agent Richard Shaloub as “harbourside living at its best in the The Pier”.
There has been no price reveal, but it is thought they secured about $3.7m for the Hickson Rd apartment with full-length terrace.
The couple bought for $3,025,000 in 2017. Over the holding time of seven plus years, the annual growth was 2.59 per cent.
It was the first sale on The Pier in almost two years in the complex where half the owners have been there for a decade plus.
The complex has 24-hour concierge and there is a 20m pool, spa, sauna and gym.
Current listings include a top-floor apartment with a 17.5m marina berth that has a $12m to $12.5m buyers’ guide.
The French-born couple arrived in Australia in 2016 after he was made chief executive of the mining giant.
But rather than take up residency in Melbourne, where the company is headquartered, they opted for Sydney, when they were not in London. Demarcus retains a weekender at Avalon Beach that cost $3.25m in 2019. The 1930s home that was described as a vintage bush cottage in its marketing by LJ Hooker is a three-bedroom house that features a grand sandstone fireplace.
It has a deepwater jetty, pontoon and working boathouse.
From time to time, Demarcus has blogged at French Yummy Mummy on the Medium website.
She has mostly only had nice things to say about Sydney when she quickly advised that the city “felt like home” and that Avalon was her “little bit of heaven”.
The blog started when Demarcus dwelt on the challenges she faced when her husband’s job took them from Paris to London’s up-market SW1, concluding that hating the French is in the British DNA.
LIFE’S A CABARET IN $26M MANSION
Linden Hall, the seven-bedroom, six-bathroom neo-Palladian, Roberston mansion of retired cabaret restaurateurs David Graham and David Kunde, has sold for $26m, a record for a lifestyle estate in the Southern Highlands.
Built 25 years ago, and with a more recent lavish makeover, the residence had a $25m to $27m guide since 2022.
The couple, who are off to live in Monaco, bought the 80ha property for $5.5m in 2007.
It tops the $22.59m record the Ainsworth pokie family secured for their 80ha Glenquarry property Braesyde in 2022.
Linden Hall was designed in 2000 by architect Richard Rowe, who modelled it on pioneer Captain John Piper’s original trophy home, Henrietta Villa at Point Piper, using Mitchell Library drawings. The limestone house was built by hotel project manager Garth Pettit and Julie Mozes with 1749sq m internal space, but now has 2000sq m.
It was listed by Drew Lindsay Sotheby’s in conjunction with Shena Jackson at Jacksonwall, with its marketing including a video from retired broadcaster Alan Jones, a friend of the vendors.
“It’s the whole deal and it is one of the most magnificent homes in the world, but it’s in the Southern Highlands,” Jones said.
“The dining room is the envy of Windsor Castle.”
Paloma, the Highlands’ priciest lifestyle offering, had initial $40m hopes, but former Crown chairman John Alexander will take $30m-plus for the 39ha Robertson holding.
AGENT IN COURT OVER OFFICE FILES
The end of financial year led to a stream of agent movements between rival estate offices, with one resulting in Supreme Court proceedings before Justice Mark Richmond seeking the return of the downloaded office files and a restraint of trade.
It was Belle Property Neutral Bay that took 15-year veteran Chris Davies to court after his move to Ray White Lower North Shore, whose offices sit within the restraint radius area within his employment agreement, ie the Wollstonecraft, Cammeray, Crows Nest, St Leonards and Naremburn suburbs. Evans admitted he had downloaded material from the customer relationship management system, and accepted that this material should be destroyed or returned.
Following compliance, Davies is to submit his phone and computer for a Korda Mentha forensic search.
It was noted Davies’ right to a livelihood was facing “significant financial disadvantage” since Ray White had recently advised him he had been stood down and not permitted to work until the proceedings had been resolved.
The matter is set for a July 22 directions hearing.
With Davies’ name on the sign board with colleagues Helen Wilson and Matthew Smythe, one of his recent conjunctional sales was a $6.3m Cammeray family home that sold to Donna Doyle.
CATTLE FARM SETS RECORD
Caldera Farm, a 114ha Limpinwood property in the Tweed Valley, has been sold for a record $6.45m through Brent Savage and Ethan Price at LS Properties Casuarina.
The five-bedroom, four-bathroom homestead with VJ-panelled walls has views of Mt Warning.
With frontage to Hopping Dicks Creek, the working cattle farm, capable of running 80 breeders, is minutes from Tyalgum and Chillingham.
PENTHOUSE A $7M HIT
Departed Art Gallery of NSW boss Michael Brand and his wife Tina have sold their two-bedroom Ashdown, Elizabeth Bay penthouse for about $7m.
It came seven weeks after they revised the guide to $6.8m, down from the $8.2m given when the listing hit the market in March through Renee Cross at Ray White Touma Taylor.
Its 295sq m Elizabeth Bay Rd company-title apartment sits atop the Aaron Bolo-designed P&O-style 1930s building.
BOXING CLEVER FOR $5.7M
The former home of the Tszyu boxing family in Carss Park has been sold for yet again another record price.
Blake Morris and Sunny Sun of Black Diamondz secured $5.7m.
The tri-level six-bedroom, six-bathrom residence on its 2420sq m holding was sold for $2.9m in 2013 by the Tszyu family. It had been extended since they bought for $785,000 in 2000.
Got a property news tip? Email jonathan.chancellor@news.com.au
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