The Sell: Former Shark Luke Lewis lists oceanfront home at Cronulla
Retired NRL champion Luke Lewis and his wife Sonia have listed their oceanfront Cronulla home with $9.5m to $10.25m price hopes.
NSW
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Retired NRL champion Luke Lewis and his wife Sonia have listed their Cronulla home.
The oceanfront property has $9.5m to $10.25m price hopes through local agent Jon Brookes.
The couple, who purchased the 608sq m property on The Esplanade for $2.5m in 2013, have advised the listing is because they are too young to sit still for long.
They are parents of eight-year-old Hazel and six-year-old Levi.
Since their purchase of what he described as a “rabbit warren”, they have completely overhauled the century-old home.
The four-bedroom, three-bathroom residence holds water views from Boat Harbour to Jibbon Beach.
It has alfresco spaces at the front and rear, complete with a pool with waterfall.
There is also a four-car garage.
Lewis made his first-grade debut for the Penrith Panthers against the Melbourne Storm in 2001, having spent his junior career with Blacktown City Junior Rugby League.
In the 2003 NRL grand final he played on the wing in the Panthers’ 18-6 win over the Sydney Roosters.
He joined Cronulla in 2013 and retired in 2018 after 324 games, winning the 2016 premiership and the Clive Churchill Medal.
He married Sonia Di Loreto in 2011.
Since his retirement he has launched multiple business ventures.
One, alongside his friend Mohammed Ali Ayad, is iDlvr, a personalised delivery service offering same-day on-demand delivery through an app.
And there’s also Unite, a wealth management company for professional athletes that also provides player management services.
Lewis has been on the ABC NRL Grandstand commentary team.
He’s just launched a fitness app, Fitness Mates, that connects personal trainers and gyms.
For six years, Luke Lewis has been a regular at the gym.
“It just keeps me in check,” Lewis told Fatima Kdouh at The Saturday Telegraph.
“I wake up every morning at 5am. I’m at the gym by 6am. I lift between 6-8am. I do my sauna and have my recovery session.
“It keeps my daily routine going and reminds me that’s what I used to do for a living.”
FISHER SELLSHER FIRST HOME AS SHE MOVES ON
Actress Isla Fisher, who announced her separation from comedian Sacha Baron Cohen earlier this year, has pocketed $930,000 from the sale of her apartment in Woollahra.
She purchased the two-bedroom, one-bathroom Wallis Street apartment for $171,500 in 1995, when she was just 19, after landing a role on the Summer Bay soapie Home And Away on Channel 7 as Shannon Reed.
The 1930s apartment, located on the Ocean Street corner directly across from Centennial Park, had been listed with a $1m guide, but pulled from its September auction.
Her Capital Conveyancing Services draft contract on display at its open for inspections had her name redacted, such is her apparent status these days.
It had been operated by Fisher as a tenancy with it last marketed at $400 per week in early 2021, having been slashed from its $680 a week in 2018 given the extended Covid pandemic hit on the rental market.
The abode, with windows on three sides as well as a balcony, has been bought by solicitor Douglas Horn and Stan staffer Iona Hutchison.
Fisher, 48, and husband Sacha Baron Cohen announced their split in April.
The couple advised on social media that they had actually separated the year prior.
“After a long tennis match lasting over twenty years, we are finally putting our racquets down,” they wrote. “In 2023, we jointly filed to end our marriage.”
The pair, who walked down the aisle in March 2010, having met at a party in Sydney in 2002, had divided their time between Fisher’s hometown of Perth, Sydney, London and Los Angeles.
Fisher once expressed “a secret fantasy” of moving to Byron Bay.
Cohen’s estimated fortune has been put at $74m.
ALBO DROPS PRICE GUIDANCE ON DULWICH HILL TOWNHOUSE
The price guidance on the Dulwich Hill investment property listing of Anthony Albanese was tweaked midweek – while he was returning from the G20 summit in Brazil – to $1.75m, as the Prime Minister seeks to meet the falling property market.
The three-bedroom townhouse had $1.9m guidance on its early September listing.
Giving eviction notice to his $680-a-week tenant in May, Albanese had signalled his desire to “simplify his affairs” after his personal situation changed, namely his upcoming nuptials to partner Jodie Haydon.
But it also emerged the first couple had spotted a luxury Copacabana house in late September, which they secured for $4.3m – down from its $4,650,000 sale in 2021.
The clifftop home is now up for $1900-a-week rental.
His redundant Dulwich Hill property was pulled on auction-eve on October 11, with the one serious buyer apparently “being a bit cute with the price”.
The marketing got its first amended price guide of $1.85m after it had been pulled from auction.
The Lewisham Street property had cost $1.175m in November 2015.
The Sell reported at the time it had been put up for rent at $880 a week, reflecting a 3.9 per cent yield.
The then-new property initially had $1.3m hopes.
The Dulwich Hill three-bedroom median hit a record $2.27m median in August, but currently sits at $2.21m, according to PropTrack after 39 sales over the past year.
One of those sales took place on the same day as Albo’s intended auction, when an Abergeldie Street townhouse fetched $1.935m through Walter Burfitt-Williams at Ray White Taylor and Partners.
“Similar to Albo, we had lost all of our buyers on the Wednesday morning before the Saturday auction – it was going to be a challenge,” Burfitt-Williams said.
“We doubled down, though, and managed to get two fresh buyers there for Saturday – one of whom saw it for the first time the night before the auction.”
WILL HOME BE A HIT FOR A SIXER ON THE MOVE?
Retired Sydney Sixers cricketer Steve O’Keefe is selling his newly-built home in Lennox Head.
O’Keefe, whose cricket career saw him win three Big Bash League titles, moved to Lennox Head at the end of the ’23/24 season.
It is where he has teamed up on several new builds since 2016 with his property business partner Greg Webb, buying building blocks for new houses.
Set on 600sq m, his own home was built by local master builder Sam Penrose, offering four bedrooms, three bathrooms, two living areas and a pool and lawn area.
Peter Yopp from Byron Bay Real Estate Agency has a $1,675,000 guide.
The Habitat Way house features sheer curtains, ducted air-conditioning, ceiling fans, and a 6.6kW solar system.
The spin bowler and journalist fiancee Lexie Cartwright have made the move further north to Palm Beach on the Gold Coast with a Kamber-built home designed by local Jayson Pate.
“It was always the plan to come up here fulltime after I retired from cricket to get out of the city and be closer to Lexie’s family, who live on the Gold Coast,” O’Keefe told The Sell.
O’Keefe sold his two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment on The Corso, in Manly, for $2.55m late last year. It had been bought for $921,500 off the plan in 2011.
O’Keefe, who does commentary for Fox Sports, made his First-Class debut for New South Wales in 2005 and his Test debut (cap 439) in 2014.
BOOM BUY SALE HOPES LOOK BUSTED
The Suffolk Park offering Pompano House, listed by Darren Palmer of The Block and his husband Olivier Duvillard, seems set for a bigger loss.
After costing $3.85 million in the pandemic-induced 2021 regional property boom, it came with initial $3.1 million to $3.3 million guidance in a “quiet listing” through Byron Bay First National agent Jane Johnston.
The guidance was then tweaked to $2.95 million to $3.245 million.
Now it comes with $2.55 million to $2.8 million guidance through Johnston.
It is held through DPTM Holdings.
The chic, four-bedroom Beachside Drive home, which rents at $1500 a night peak season, is just 100m from Tallow Beach.
Complete with saltwater pool – now overlooked by a timber entertaining space – the two-level home sits on 720sq m of tropical gardens.
It backs on to bushland, with a path to the beach from the back gate.
The couple have also yet to sell their Bondi Beach home, which came with initial $9.5 million hopes in August. Its last known guidance was $8.5 million.
Interior designer Palmer collaborated with architect John Deuchrass and construction company Taste Living in 2022 to rebuild much of the existing house.
Palmer’s first TV gig came in 2009, the year before he met his husband, who works in the cosmetics industry.
AGENTS WON’T CROWE ABOUT IT
McGrath Estate Agents have declined to comment on the report that Russell Crowe’s whole-floor Woolloomooloo Finger Wharf apartment is being offered with $42 million to $50 million price guidance.
Estate agents must follow price range rules under the Property and Stock Agents Act, with the advisory not to exceed the lowest price by more than 10 per cent.
It last traded in 2003 at $14.35 million.
LETTING GO OF COOGEE ROOST
Former NRL Sydney Rooster turned player agent Steve Deacon has listed a Coogee investment property with $3.1 million-plus expectations through James Giltinan from Coogee Real Estate.
The Beach St unit was purchased in 1992, during his playing days, for $345,000.
Spanning 112sq m internally, the three-bedroom, one-bathroom hilltop apartment is scheduled for a December 14 auction.
PEARLER SELLS AFTER LONG RUN
Ian Fairweather, the long-retired Channel 9 presenter, has sold his two-bedroom Pearl Beach home after a year-long effort, securing $2.525 million through Coastal Realty.
The initial $3 million price guide was later reduced to $2.75 million in early spring.
Fairweather had purchased the Green Point Rd home for $427,000 in 1995.
It is set on a 708sq m parcel, with an inclinator lift.
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