Bombers’ vice-captain Andrew McGrath and fiance Emma Laughlin have scored a seven-figure sale for their Albert Park house.

The couple put their renovated Victorian-era residence on the market in March.

Kay & Burton partner James Driver, who had the listing alongside colleague Campbell Kilsby, declined to comment on the price it fetched.

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But industry sources indicated the three-bedroom abode recently sold above its asking range for $2.675m.

McGrath previously told the Herald Sun that he purchased the double-storey pad at 85 Richardson St as his first home, at the age of 21.

Prior to Ms Laughlin moving in, he counted Essendon players Jordan Ridley and Sam Durham among his housemates.

“They’re like brothers to me and we spent a lot of time enjoying the house and sharing commutes to work,” McGrath said at the time.

“On days off, we had a lot of trips to the beach, as three athletes we spent a lot of time there in recovery and took advantage of the great cafes nearby.”

In 2016, McGrath joined the Bombers as number one pick in the national draft.

The defender has since collected a number of awards including multiple gongs from his own club, the 2020 Adam Ramanauskas Most Courageous Player award among them.

He also received the 2023 and 2024 Bruce Heymanson Best Clubman award.

In 2022, McGrath played his 100th match for Essendon and was appointed the team’s vice-captain the next year.

The Albert Park house’s kitchen is fitted with stone benches, Miele appliances and an integrated fridge and freezer.

A gas fireplace graces the living and dining area, while floor-to-ceiling sliding doors lead to a rear outdoor space where McGrath added a deck.

Two ground-floor bedrooms feature wardrobes, ornate ceilings and open fireplaces.

Upstairs, the main bedroom has a walk-in wardrobe and ensuite.

Mr Driver said that three sets of buyers competed for the keys during an expressions of interest process before a couple emerged as the successful purchasers.

“There was really strong interest, the property was well inspected from day one by a combination of local and out-of-area buyers,” Mr Driver said.

He said that with the Reserve Bank of Australia widely expected to announce further rate cuts to the nation’s official cash rate later this year, more buyers were making offers “rather than sitting on the sidelines”.

“Consumer confidence has lifted in the property market,” Mr Driver added.

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Gold Coast mayor Tom Tate and his wife Ruth have sold their luxury Surfers Paradise home for $5.4m, making themselves a tidy $1.15m profit in less than two years.

It is the latest deal in the high-profile couple’s multimillion dollar real estate portfolio which has seen them bank more than $25m from luxury property sales since 2020.

The sale, which recently settled, was handled by Russell and Bob Rollington of Surfers Paradise First National, who declined to comment when contacted by this publication.

Property records reveal the Tates bought the home at 17 Seafarer Court, Paradise Waters for $4.25m in 2023.

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The property was listed with a $6m price tag in November, 2024, before officially selling in March.

“East to wide water just off the main channel and offering breathtaking Surfers Paradise and Main Beach city skyline views, this extraordinary four-bedroom family home exudes quality and luxury,” the listing states.

“Effortlessly fusing elegant surrounds with easy living and entertaining, this architecturally designed residence is the epitome of an entertainers dream offering an ideal layout for a large extended family.”

Photos show minor cosmetic works however no major renovations or improvements were made to the house during their ownership.

It was the 10th property the Tates had sold in the suburb over the past 30 years.

The couple’s recent Gold Coast sales include 36 Buccaneer Court, Paradise Waters, which sold for $3.675m in 2021, and 23 Maryland Ave, which traded for $5.8m in 2023.

PropTrack data shows the median house price in Surfers Paradise is $4m, up 33.3 per cent.

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Alexander Phillips, Australia’s top real estate agent for the 10th consecutive year after topping the Real Estate Business (REB) industry website rankings, doesn’t have a secret winning approach.

He reveals everything about his powerhouse sales method, in appearances on the weekly High Performance industry podcast, for any agent tuning in.

Phillips, of Phillips Pantzer Donnelley, and his support staff, topped the latest rankings when securing a $962 million annual tally from 196 sales across Sydney’s coastal east in 2024.

The huge $962 million record is more than some countries make in a year as part of their gross domestic profit – Donnelley sold homes worth more than countries like Tonga and Nauru generate in a year.

Phillips, with 24 years’ experience, first hit the REB list in 2014 when he ranked second with 108 sales yielding $200m. It was to an agent from Toorak.

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His average price sale has risen over the period from $1.85m to $4.9m in 2024, which compares to an average of $2.89m across the top 50 NSW agents on the CommBank-sponsored list.

Phillips also ranks among the quickest agents, selling homes in an average of 21 days, although this rose from 19 days in the prior year.

The son of an acclaimed car salesman credits his success to “good relationships and good processes”.

Of course sales success leads to continued momentum.

Significantly, while he represents vendors like all agents, Phillips displays an acute sense of buyer placement as soon as a listing comes into view, and then from the innovative photo shoot open house.

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The ongoing momentum, and self promotion amid the many neighbourhoods of his sales success, ensures he is top of mind when prospective vendors are making their decision.

Recent analysis of 35,000 active listing agents across the residential market in 2024 suggests that the top 20 per cent of agents listed more than 60 per cent of all properties.

Phillips’s nearest challenger, Michael Clarke, had an $871m tally from 221 sales across the harbour at Manly.

While they don’t compete, the tally reflects a slight narrowing in the gap to $91m for Clarke. Clarke had $814m in 202 sales in 2023 when the gap was $159m. Clarke was also a new entrant in 2014 with 97 sales, yielding a $139m tally.

Entry on to the REB list published by Momentum Media is voluntary, and self nominating, with the data overseen by Agile Market Intelligence.

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Numerous agents have ceased declaring their sales tally, since the reveal will show that they are way behind their perceived rivals.

The 45-year-old Phillips wakes weekdays at 4am, has a hot bath, manifests, and trains on gym equipment, before grabbing a coffee and getting to the office by 6am.

“Getting up early gives me two hours where I’m not bothered to plan the day because by 6.30am my phone is ringing,” he recently told the podcast. He’s not had a weekday client lunch for a decade.

Describing the current market as “challenging”, Phillips notes “volumes are down, sales are down and agents are off”.

“There’s stress out there,” he says.

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An award-winning lakefront home that’s played host to a string of well-known Aussie musicians has notched up one of Leopold’s biggest sales.

A buyer already living on the Bellarine Peninsula has bought the secluded four-bedroom house, designed by acclaimed architect Kerstin Thompson, after a seven-month campaign.

Bellarine Property, Barwon Heads agent Levi Turner said he was unable to disclose the sale price of the 4.86ha property at 15 Maloneys Rd, Leopold.

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It was originally listed with a $5.75m price guide, which was slashed to $4.75m to $4.95m in February.

At this price, it would be Leopold’s most expensive home.

Megan Washington, Vance Joy, Tim Rogers and the late Kinky Friedman are among musicians who have played in the home’s on-site recording studio.

The property on the shores of Lake Connewarre also features a pool, a sports oval/heli pad, an olive grove, fruit trees and three outdoor baths on a raised deck.

Mr Turner said it ranked among the top 10 homes he had sold on the Bellarine Peninsula in 12 years of real estate.

“It was a couple of things – the views are amazing and the privacy. It’s so tucked away but you are 15 minutes to get into Geelong,” he said.

“And the house won architectural awards.

“The buyers are going to do some internal cosmetic renovations to make it their own but from the outside, from an architectural point of view, you could still build it today. It was really cool.”

The 22-year-old home received both the 2005 Victorian Coastal Award for Building and Building Design and the 2003 Australian Institute of Architects’ Victorian Chapter Harold Desbrowe-Annear Award, which recognises each year’s best residential project.

Its long, black structure is designed to blend into the environment and features a folded roof that mimics the shape of an origami black swan.

The residence is divided into three pavilions, including the main three-bedroom house, a guest apartment with recording studio and a garage/carport for five vehicles.

Mr Turner said there was a solid response from the market throughout the campaign.

“You get these amazing properties on the Bellarine and the Surf Coast and Geelong and you think ‘everyone is going to love it’ and people do but to actually buy it, one, they’ve got to have the money and two, be in a position to buy and they are few and far between,” he said.

The vendor was a self-confessed cricket tragic who incorporated an oval into extensive gardens by landscape architect Tim Nicholas.

Paths wind through the property to Lake Connewarre where a raised deck provides storage for watercraft.

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A real estate mogul has revealed the controversial steps she took to boost her career and did several “unhinged things” to make a name for herself.

Barbara Corcoran took to TikTok to lift the lid on the ways she attempted to boost her real estate company, The Corcoran Group — which was founded in 1973 — in its earliest days, Realtor reports.

The 76-year-old “Shark Tank” star posted a series of throwback photos from the earliest days in her real estate career, which she launched in New York City.

Noting that her business was the “first brokerage on the internet,” Ms Corcoran explained that she took to tracking the prospective URLs of her competitors so she could see who joined the web behind her.

“When I was the first brokerage on the internet, I registered my competitors’ URLs so I could keep track of when everyone else woke up,” she shared, adding: “The big guys came calling last.”

Ms Corcoran then revealed that she came up with a genius idea to use a market crash to her advantage by essentially conducting a real estate fire sale, one that ultimately netted her an incredible profit.

“[I] priced 88 apartments alike during a market crash and sold out within an hour. I made $US1 million commission in a single day,” she added.

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The entrepreneur also confessed that she had to bet on herself and aim high — even at the beginning of her career — noting that, to a certain extent, she had to fake it until she made it, at least where her status within the industry was concerned.

To that end, the “Shark Tank” investor wrote her own self-titled industry analysis, called The Corcoran Report, which she first published during a recession, relying solely on data from her own sales in order to offer a market evaluation.

“[I] wrote The Corcoran Report, declaring that NYC prices hit an all-time low, based only on my 14 sales for the year,” she confessed in the TikTok video.

Despite the lack of data in the report, her strategy worked, with Ms Corcoran revealing in a previous LinkedIn post that she was stunned to find herself quoted in a New York Times piece just days after she’d published it.

“They quoted my report, and I couldn’t believe my eyes!” she recalled.

“And right after that, our phones never stopped ringing. It immediately put us on the map. I could hear my salespeople answer the phones and say, ‘Oh, you’ve heard of us?!’

“I was still the same small company I was the week before, but I now had the power of the press behind me, and everyone treated us differently.”

But still, Ms Corcoran didn’t stop her efforts to woo more clients — as well as their pets.

In fact, the industry expert shared that she even drew in new customers by appealing to pet owners and acting as both a real estate mogul and dog trainer.

“When the co-op board revealed they would start interviewing dogs, I taught dogs how to shake hands in Central Park,” she said.

And she didn’t just drive business by training dogs, she also “took a job as a messenger delivering packages at night to help make ends meet.”

Unlike many other businesses at the time, Ms Corcoran used the press to her advantage and even invited them to “open the elusive safe in the Guggenheim mansion without knowing what was inside.”

She revealed the safe ended up being “empty.”

And she even dressed up to draw attention. “I threw a company party where everyone dressed as nuns. It was a riot,” she said alongside a snap of members of the real estate company dressed up.

In addition to pretending it was Halloween, Ms Corcoran revealed she also recruited the help of farm animals to make sales.

“I put real cows on the penthouse roof to help sell Stewart Mott’s overpriced apartment and got major press for it. (Yes, Mott of the applesauce empire),” she revealed.

Lastly, to establish herself in the celebrity home market, Ms Corcoran threw out an A-lister’s name — who wasn’t her client — and flew to success.

“I published the Madonna report based on what I imagined Madonna would want in a home,” the 76-year-old said.

“The media went wild and started calling me the ‘broker to the stars.’ She wasn’t even my client.”

Just days before she candidly revealed her “unhinged” behaviour, Ms Corcoran welcomed Caleb Simpson, the TikTok star-turned-real estate influencer, into her NYC dwelling for one last time.

She offers an intimate glimpse of the property’s most impressive amenities, including jaw-dropping views of Manhattan’s iconic skyline.

In Simpson’s viral video, Ms Corcoran joked that even her most dedicated followers likely wouldn’t have “recognised” the pad when it was first listed, because she had removed all of her possessions in order to stage it for sale.

Though she seemed firm in her decision to offload the abode — which she first came across in 1992, 23 years before she bought it in 2015 — she confessed that she “can’t believe” she’s bidding farewell to the home after so many years.

Ms Corcoran first came across the penthouse dwelling on the Upper East Side in 1992 when she was working as a messenger to make ends meet and delivered a letter to the unit’s resident.

At the time, the opulent home wasn’t on the market — nor would it have been anywhere close to fitting within Corcoran’s budget if it had been. Yet, she couldn’t get the property out of her mind.

“I thought, ‘My God, I’ve never seen anything as beautiful in my life,’” she told the New York Times.

So, she asked the then-owner to get in touch if she ever decided to sell her penthouse — a decision that she ended up making more than two decades later.

Parts of this story first appeared in Realtor and was republished with permission.

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