We’re back with Kieran Clair and Kevin Turner as they discuss interesting property stories for this week, but this time, we are also joined by Naomi Findlay of the Reno Show.
Our first story is about a mud-house that has been in production for five years. The cob –cob is a mixture of sand, clay, water, and earth– castle is the most requested revisit in the history of Grand Designs UK since it was featured 7 years ago.
In 2011, Host Kevin McCloud first explained his ambitious plans to build a massive house out of cob than can serve as a modern family home for him, his wife, and their three sons. He reckons that it will be the largest cob building on the planet.
Five years of rain, mud, sweat, and tears later, the 930 sqm house has been finished. McCloud describes it as a fantasy fusion of cob, grass, and stone that looks like it came straight out of the cover of a ‘70s prog rock album. While McCloud is as happy as a pig in mud (pun intended), it seems that Rose couldn’t wait for the mud mansion to be finished. Here’s hoping the divorce was amicable.
Our second story tackles the rise of female million-dollar agents in real estate. Victorian star agents Kylie Charlton and Lisa Totaro have their own distinct ways in breaking through the turbulent real estate market.
Totaro is high volume, very process based, and uses databases, while Charlton is immersed in community and personal connection. Industry veteran and real estate coach Tom Panos said that the sector was seeing the emergence of million dollar agents in more females every day, and their strategies demonstrated that there is no one way. There is your way.
For our third story, we tackle Australia’s latest musical collaboration: a sound chapel on the outback. Award-winning architect, Glenn Murcutt, was commissioned to design a “sound chapel” inside an abandoned 10-metre high water tank.
The five-metre-cubed concrete chamber will pipe music by Lentz, a Sydney Symphony Orchestra violinist, into the surrounding countryside when it’s not used. He says the raw surroundings of the outback and the night sky make a great backdrop for both soft and dynamic music.
The chapel itself will be open to the elements, with car audio-grade speakers on each of the four walls that can withstand the searing heat and direct rain. It will be an austere, dimly-lit room with a concrete bench in the middle, covering the subwoofer placed on the floor.
Although reports say that the Perth property market is on the mend following its 2014 downturn, recent market activity has suggested that it will be a long and slow recovery.
There’s a little less population growth for the last quarter, so even though prices have gone up, sales activity decreased by 10%. In their defense, Kieran mentions that quarterly data may not be enough to see how things are going. It would be better to track trends a little longer than that to see how the market looks especially after the recent election.
Perth has just come out of a dire situation in its property cycle, so we think long-term growth will eventually come along.
Our last story for this week features a property straight out of a southern romance novel. It’s also steeped in Civil War history, serving as a hospital for Union Army officers and as General Rufus Saxton’s HQ during the war.
The $2.93 million property has been elegantly restored and featured in the Academy award nominated movie, The Prince of Tides.
The article says that the features of the 7,600 sqm house are classic and southern-inspired. The rooms are generous and speak of earlier times when a party would converse in the main living room, go in to dinner and afterwards the men would gather in the library with their port and the ladies would retire to the parlor. The three-storey home also has six bedrooms, seven bathrooms, a large entry foyer with dramatic staircase, formal living and dining rooms, a library-media room, parlor, family room and a large eat-in kitchen.
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