Nestled among the plane trees and zelkova foliage on Wallis Street, this two-bedroom Art Deco apartment has curved brick walls bordering a corner in Sydney’s eastern suburbs of Woollahra.
This is Isla Fisher’s first apartment, which she bought for a whopping $171,500 in 1995, one year after she started her career as Shannon Reed in Home and Away. It’s a place.
At just 19 years old, Fisher was on his way to becoming one of the most recognized and successful figures in the Australian television and film industry.
Isla Fisher is selling her apartment about 30 years after purchasing it. Photo: @islafisher Instagram
The second floor apartment is located in Woollahra. Photo: NewsWire / Max Mason Hubers
In the following decades, Fisher’s Sydney apartment was used as a rental investment property while working on films such as Wedding Crashers and Confessions of a Shopaholic.
Almost 30 years after purchasing the Art Deco property, it’s time for the Hollywood star to hang up the keys.
The Australian superstar has put her 1930-built apartment up for sale after splitting from her husband, British actor and comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, with whom she has been together for more than 20 years.
In partnership with Sydney-based JK Agency, the newly renovated apartment was put on the market in late September with a price guide of $1.1 million, which was later adjusted to $1 million.
An eager buyer interested in purchasing the property was expecting her New South Wales apartment to be auctioned on Sunday, October 12.
However, before the gavel could drop, JK Agency withdrew from the scheduled auction.
An art deco apartment is for sale. Photo: NewsWire / Max Mason Hubers
Maria Ciancio, one of the agents for the sale, told NewsWire that the auction was canceled because there was not enough interest on the day.
“We didn’t have enough people ready that day,” Ciancio explained. “We basically know in advance…that no one was in a state where they were ready to go.”
Instead, the property will be sold privately.
Following the cancellation of the auction, the apartment dropped $100,000 from its guide price before returning to a stable price of $990,000. That’s not something to sneeze at, but it still falls short of the original listing price of $1.1 million.
Sydney’s housing market has been volatile lately. Photo: NewsWire / Max Mason Hubers
Realizing that the apartment could not be sold at auction, the broker had to switch to private sales.
Despite the interest in Fisher’s apartment, the drop in the asking price is not surprising.
“We’re at the mercy of the market right now,” Ciancio said, describing the current situation as “strange.”
Although unable to host an auction on Sunday, Ciancio told the newswire the team was “close to a deal” on the Uralla property. The deal is expected to close this week.
As for Mr. Fisher, even news of the valuation change hasn’t wiped the smile off his face.
“Ira is happy,” Ciancio said.
“We got her the best we could in this market. She knows we did our best to get the best price.”
The apartment is scheduled to be sold this weekend. Photo: NewsWire / Max Mason Hubers
It’s not just the fact that Fisher was not put up for auction that is causing a stir.
Anthony Albanese recently withdrew his investment property in Sydney’s Inner West from an auction scheduled to take place on Saturday, October 12.
The prime minister bought the three-bedroom, two-bathroom townhouse in 2015 for $1.175 million, and has put it on the market for $1.85 million.
There was one potential buyer interested in purchasing the Dulwich Hill home, but Shad Hassen of Agency Inner West said that person did not make a “firm commitment” leading up to the auction and that the final The real estate agent explained that they had decided to cancel the auction. Plug in before the 11am Saturday auction.
“We had interest in this property, but it didn’t materialize, so we decided to put an asking price on it instead of an auction,” Hassen told NewsWire.
A Sydney real estate agent explained that although the auction did not materialize, this was not due to the property itself, but due to a glut of properties available and a lack of purchasing power.
“There are more homes on the market, so buyers have more options…There doesn’t seem to be a rush to buy now,” he said.
The prime minister recently withdrew his investment property from auction. Photo: NewsWire / Simon Bullard
Lack of interest also has nothing to do with who sells the property.
“It has nothing to do with the Albo estate,” Hassen laughed. “That’s what’s happening in this area.”
What’s happening in Sydney’s property market?
PropTrack senior economist Paul Ryan said Sydney’s property market was “surprisingly strong” despite high interest rates and falling median prices, although apartments were not as successful as houses.
In Sydney’s eastern suburbs, where Fisher’s apartment is located, the median price of all properties has increased by 12.1% in the past three months, while the number of units has increased by 2.6% over the same period.
“The (median) unit price hasn’t kept up. The balance of growth has been pretty even over the past year or so, and we can expect that to continue going forward,” Ryan said.
However, median price growth in Sydney’s eastern suburbs is “one of the strongest market segments across the city”.
Interestingly, this is also the case in the city’s western suburbs, where median prices are reported to have increased by 9.1 per cent over the past 12 months, although this increase has slowed in recent weeks.
As for the two hot properties up for sale, Ryan believes the market won’t cause them to be listed at lower prices than expected.
“Every auction campaign has its own story,” he said. “I don’t think it’s because the purchasing environment is particularly weak at the moment.
“The New South Wales market is doing amazingly well. We’ve seen prices continue to rise. Sydney prices are up 5 per cent over last year.”
Mr Ryan said that although the rate of inflation had “slowed down a bit”, this level of growth was “above the average rate over the last 30 years or so”.