Prime minister scores $1.75m buyer for Dulwich Hill digs

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese capped off a busy week late on Friday when he sold his Dulwich Hill investment townhouse for $1.75 million.

It was no easy sell for the Labor leader given the fast deterioration of Sydney’s property market this spring. It was listed in September with initial hopes of $1.9 million, and was pulled from its October auction only to have the asking price revised to $1.75 million in recent weeks.

Anthony Albanese has sold his Dulwich Hill investment townhouse.Credit:

The Agency’s Shad Hassan would not comment when contacted on Friday night, but the marketing signalled the property as sold for $1.75 million.

The three-bedroom semi last traded nine years ago for $1,175,000. Values locally had soared during Albanese’s ownership, up 92.8 per cent since 2015 to a median of $2.28 million.

However, those gains are expected to retract in coming months as the market cools.

The Labor leader made no secret of his wish to sell his investment property given plans to simplify his life, and his real estate portfolio, ahead of his coming marriage to Jodie Haydon.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese joined the spring selling rush in September with $1.9 million hopes. Credit:

The good news comes just weeks after Albanese and Haydon bought a clifftop house on the Central Coast’s Copacabana for $4.3 million, causing consternation among his Labor colleagues given the current cost-of-living crisis.

The Dulwich Hill property had made headlines earlier this year when the then tenant, music venue owner Jim Flanagan, went public with his objections to being asked to vacate the property so it could be sold.

Flanagan had initially leased the house for $880 a week four years ago, but Albanese had dropped the price to $680 a week during COVID and had left it unchanged since, which made Flanagan reluctant to leave.

Despite a media maelstrom that followed, the prime minister defended his decision to sell the property. He said Flanagan had been well looked after for a long period of time, but that he (Albanese) was entitled to make decisions about his personal life.

The Dulwich Hill house last traded in 2015 for $1,175,000.

Albanese had an easier time selling another Inner West investment property in 2021. Having long owned the Californian bungalow with his former wife, Carmel Tebbutt, the former NSW deputy premier, it was listed for $2.1 million and sold a few weeks later ahead of its scheduled auction for $2.35 million.

The result more than doubled their money on the $1,115,000 purchase price of 2012.

Albanese and Tebbutt’s former family home in Marrickville, purchased for $997,500 in 2006, was transferred into Albanese’s sole ownership in 2019 following their split.

In early 1990, Albanese was all of 26 when he debuted on property title records as a “political party official” buying a two-bedroom semi in Marrickville for $146,000.

The most recent sale comes at the end of one of Albanese’s busiest weeks as prime minister, in which he oversaw the passage of 45 pieces of legislation.

Of the 31 bills the Senate passed on Thursday night, one included the Build to Rent legislation that the government hopes will increase the number of rental properties by 80,000, making it the largest-ever federal supply of rental homes.