Amelia Hamer pitched herself as a renter. She owns two investment properties

Amelia Hamer, the Liberal Party’s great hope to wrest the blue-ribbon seat of Kooyong back from the teals, has pitched herself as a renter and someone who empathises with tenants’ struggles.

But this masthead can reveal that while the Oxford-educated 31-year-old is renting in Hawthorn, she is a landlord and owns two investment properties – a million-dollar flat in inner London and an apartment in Canberra, both bought in the past decade.

Amelia Hamer, the 31-year-old Oxford-educated grandniece of former Victorian premier Sir Rupert “Dick” Hamer, is hoping to unseat independent MP Monique Ryan in Kooyong.Credit: Eddie Jim

UK Property Title documents obtained by this masthead show Hamer purchased a flat in Wandsworth, south-west London, in June 2017 for £635,000 ($1.07 million at the time). Online price estimate websites suggest the property is now worth £679,000 ($1.46 million).

The property is listed online as a one-bedroom, one-bathroom flat, but Hamer was seeking to rent the property out as a two-bedroom flat in 2020 for £1600 a month (about $3000 at the time), according to public Facebook posts in a group for flat shares in London.

In the post, from June 2020, Hamer said she was “stuck in Australia so am renting out my 2 bed ground floor flat for the foreseeable future”.

“The first double bedroom is a good size and leads directly on to the garden. The second bedroom is very small but has a double bed and lots of storage,” she wrote.

Amelia Hamer’s ground-floor flat in Wandsworth, inner south-west London.Credit: Google Streetview

“You’ll be dealing directly with me so no letting agent fees etc.”

When approached with a list of questions by this masthead about her London property, Hamer responded with a two-sentence statement that revealed the existence of another property she owns in Canberra.

Hamer’s apartment in Wandsworth, in a post on Facebook from June 2020.Credit: Facebook

“While working in London and Canberra, I took out mortgages to buy the apartments that I lived in,” Hamer said in the statement.

“Now that I’m back living in Melbourne, I am renting in Hawthorn.”

She did not respond to a question about why she had not disclosed her home ownership when publicly discussing renting and housing affordability.

Hamer, who is challenging Kooyong independent MP Monique Ryan in the May 3 election, is the grandniece of former Victorian premier Sir Rupert “Dick” Hamer.

Her campaign has won the support of billionaire trucking magnate Lindsay Fox, who was friends with Sir Rupert. Fox has erected a campaign poster of the local Liberal candidate on his Toorak home’s wall.

According to Hamer’s LinkedIn profile, she worked in Canberra in the federal parliament as a policy adviser to then-cabinet minister Jane Hume between January 2021 and July 2022. Between 2014 and 2020, Hamer was living in London and worked for Bank of America and investment firm DST Global.

A spokesman for Hamer confirmed the Canberra property was being rented out.

A profile of Hamer in the Australian Financial Review last year, titled “Oxford-educated renter brings Millennial edge to Kooyong battle”, described Hamer as “a renter wanting to get into the housing market”.

On the Today Show in June, when talking about the rising cost of living, she said: “I know my rent has gone up significantly – I’m a renter.”

The Age last year described Hamer as a “Millennial finance professional who rents”.

Her campaign emphasises making home ownership more achievable for young Australians with the Liberal’s policy pledge to allow young people to access their superannuation for a home deposit.

Recently on 3AW, while railing against the Victorian government’s plan for higher density around Kooyong, she spoke about the plight of young Australians, who she said felt like “it doesn’t matter how hard I work, it doesn’t matter what I do, I’m never going to have that same quality of life that my parents had”.

In the same interview, she said people did not want to live in apartments and spoke of the Liberal Party’s pledge to bolster infrastructure in greenfield growth suburbs rather than densify the inner city.

The revelation of Hamer’s investment property portfolio is likely to be seized on by Ryan, who is fighting to retain Kooyong with an unhelpful seat boundary redistribution that has pulled her margin to 2.2 per cent.

Ryan owns one property, in which she lives, according to her parliamentary register of interests.

The campaign in Kooyong got off to a dramatic start even before a poll date was officially announced when Ryan’s husband, Peter Jordan, was filmed removing a Hamer campaign sign from a Camberwell nature strip last month, claiming it was illegally placed.

Last week, new corflutes – zip-tied as addendums to Hamer’s usual signs– started popping up in the electorate. They read: “Monique, please DO NOT take this sign!”

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