Oprah Winfrey’s presence in Australia has already been felt as she arrived in Australia a couple of days ahead of her speaking tour — giving one Australian local business a massive shout out.

It comes as her $4.8 billion (US$3.2 billion) wealth has been exposed — and where she’s been hiding it after rising to fame from the late 1980s.

The now 71-year-old talk show queen, philanthropist and media mogul — who has come to Australia for her Oprah: In Conversation tour — unsurprisingly also happens to be a real estate tycoon.

Over the years the media queen has bought and sold many properties — and created a massive property portfolio.

This comes as Winfrey expressed her love of Australia — and its food scene — during a visit to Sydney’s iconic Bills cafe.

“It’s so great to be back in Sydney. It’s one of the most beautiful cities in the world,” she said in an Instagram post to her 22 million followers.

It was Hugh Jackman who tipped Winfrey off about their iconic ricotta pancakes.

“These hot cakes are much acclaimed and talked about by the one and only Hugh Jackman,” she said in a video as she sat at Bills in Bondi.

“Hugh you were absolutely unbelievably right! This place, come here to Sydney you’ve got to stop in.

“We ate like we’ve never eaten before and those ricotta pancakes … mwa mwa mwa.”

Turns out they were so good, she went back for more.

When a Channel 7 reporter approached her and asked if she was back for lunch she answered saying:

“No, we are back for more ricotta pancakes. I hope they’re still serving them. If they’re not, we are going into the kitchen and see what we can do about that.”

Bills is owned by acclaimed restaurateur Bill Granger, who opened his first restaurant in Darlinghurst in 1993. Opening a second location in Surry Hills in 1996, Bills has then gone global across Japan, London and Seoul with different cafes and restaurants that focus on fresh, quality food.

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Winfrey’s wealth goes well beyond her career as she owns a myriad of sprawling mansions.

Here’s a breakdown of the list of homes she’s bought, sold, and currently holds.

‘The Promised Land’

Although she owns homes from coast to coast, Winfrey’s main residence can be found in Montecito, CA, a coastal community near Santa Barbara. It’s nearly two hours (with traffic) northwest of Hollywood.

In 2001, Winfrey moved into the neighbourhood with the $75 million (US$50 million) purchase of a place she’s dubbed ‘The Promised Land’. It is now estimated to be worth $150 million ($100 million).

The enormous neo-Georgian estate comprises six bedrooms, 14 bathrooms, and a 3136 sqm home on more than 40 acres.

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Offering mountain and ocean views, the gorgeous grounds include a pool, stables, landscaped gardens, her bountiful vegetable gardens, as well as a pond.

Other features include a tea house, an “upscale outhouse”, plus more than 600 verdant rose bushes.

Winfrey continues to expand her Montecito masterpiece. She snapped up an additional 23.26 acres in 2015 for $40 million (US$28.85 million).

Most recently, she snagged her neighbour Jeff Bridges’ longtime retreat for $10 million ($US$6.85 million), bringing her total acreage in the area to nearly 70 acres.

Aloha, Hawaii

Winfrey reportedly owns extensive plots of land in Hawaii, but the details are most clear for her farmhouse on the island of Maui.

Winfrey’s romance with Maui started back in 2003, when she purchased two properties in the Kula community on the Valley Isle, adding up to 23 acres for $8 million (US$5.3 million).

Each of those lots contain multiple buildings.

That purchase appears to have included a boutique bed and breakfast. So it seems she always expected to welcome guests to her tropical paradise.

Winfrey has continued snatching up properties in the area, for a total of over US$40 million and some 163 acres, according to O Magazine, which featured this video of Winfrey herself driving around her property on one of two all-terrain vehicles given to her by Ralph Lauren. She discovered the ATVs on his ranch.

She’s even rumoured to have built a secret road to her property, making access to the more populated parts of Maui that much easier.

In addition to her Kula holdings, she purchased over 60 acres in the Hana area back in 2005.

The Winfrey (Windy) City

The Oprah Winfrey Show was broadcast from Chicago from 1986 to 2011.

Along the way, Winfrey scored a few properties in Illinois. But with the end of her show’s long run in the Windy City, Winfrey appears to have also moved on from her real estate there.

In the 1990s, she bought four condos on the 56th and 57th floors of a luxury high-rise, with the idea of converting them into one duplex. The 900 sqm property sold in 2015 for $4.6 million.

She also shed a three-bedroom apartment over the Four Seasons Hotel that she had bought in 1994 for $100,000. The high-end home sold for US$1.275 million in 2015.

She also bid adieu to three units in a historic downtown building known as Acorn Lofts.

In 2013, she sold three of the live/work spaces, one for US$675,000, another for $507,000, and a third for US$875,000. For an idea of what the lofts look like, there’s a unit currently on the market (that’s not connected to Winfrey) for $1.6 million.

She also sold a modest colonial in Elmwood Park, IL, for US$375,000 in 2018.

She’s also been spotted picking up homes in Tennessee, Illinois, and Indiana, most of those houses are believed to be occupied by members of her family.

Mountain getaway

Oprah also has a cold-weather hideaway. She purchased 66 acres in coveted Mountain Village, Colorado in 2014, for US$10,850,000.

She apparently had a custom home constructed on the property, which sits above the ski town of Telluride.

But while it was being built, she reportedly bought a “temporary” home away from home to monitor the construction: a hi-tech mansion in Telluride for $13.7 million.

The contemporary construction offers complete privacy and direct trail access.

The grounds include a treetop observation tower, a fully functional funicular, and a glass and steel bridge over the great room.

Georgia on her mind

Some long-ago purchases have since been sold by the 71-year-old.

In Atlanta, Winfrey sold a 450 sqm, 39th-floor penthouse for US$1.8 million in 2008.

Reports were not clear on whether she ever made use of the place for herself. She made a small profit on the property, which she bought in 2003 for US$1,515,000.

She also had a 560 sqm house in Douglasville, GA, on 1.6 acres, which she had bought in 2005 for US$825,000. That suburban five-bedroom home was gifted to a lucky somebody in 2011.

Island living

Back in the late 1990s, Oprah had a fling with Florida life. She decamped to ultra-exclusive Fisher Island as a winter escape and snapped up multiple condos on the private island paradise, which is known as having one of the highest per capita incomes in the country.

However, she’s since let go of her Florida homes, which were all sold in the early 2000s. Many of them were smaller one-to-four bedroom apartments, and appeared to be for her entourage and friends.

Her 575 sqm penthouse sold in 2001 for $6.5 million. At the time, the sale price was considered “unheard of”. That seems quaint now — the same penthouse recently changed hands again for US$13.5 million.

Of course, after those sales, Oprah began buying up homes in Hawaii, a place that obviously held more appeal for the A-lister.

And the island life beckons closer to the mainland, too. The real estate maven reportedly picked up a 43-acre estate on Orcas Island, part of the San Juan Islands in Washington state, last May.

Oprah’s new digs, for which she paid US$8.2 million, include a four-bedroom, five-bathroom compound, plus a guesthouse.

Additional reporting by Brendan Casey

The post Oprah’s surprise favourite Aussie icon and real estate empire revealed appeared first on realestate.com.au.

Warning: This is an industry rant!

On August 1 we saw the introduction of the Form 2 in Queensland and some contract updates to the REIQ standard contract documents.

We have now had three months to use, test and review them in the market.

I was initially very critical of the Form 2’s and the land tax inclusion in the standard REIQ contracts.

It’s not their intention that I was critical of but their practical form and what was produced.

I can now confirm, after three months, that my initial concerns are 100 per cent validated. This document is ridiculous.

Last week at our Toowong office I saw a stack of papers sitting on someone’s desk – it was over 500 pages.

This was their Form 2. Five. Hundred. Pages. For one property transaction.

They are not creating transparency. They are creating a bottleneck.

They are so big in some cases that they can’t be easily sent electronically and they are too complex for someone to practically read.

We’re talking about documents that crash email systems and overwhelm document management platforms.

We have started using lawyers to produce them and even some of those are coming back with errors.

This has led to delays in settlements and even issues that have caused contracts to crash.

Real deals. Real buyers and sellers. Real consequences.

Here’s the fundamental problem: nobody reads 500 pages.

Not buyers, not sellers, not their solicitors if we’re being honest.

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So what transparency have we actually achieved? We’ve created a legal fiction, a document so comprehensive that it’s comprehensively useless.

The easy solution for the land tax component is clear: this should be managed by the state government, not buried in real estate contracts.

Create a centralised portal. Make it searchable. Make it functional.

Stop downloading state administrative responsibilities onto private transactions and then wondering why the system is breaking.

But regarding the current Form 2, I don’t have solutions, I only have problems.

And that’s the point. This document needs a complete rewrite or review if they want to achieve the transparency they originally intended.

Right now, we’re not protecting consumers. We’re protecting ourselves from litigation with documents so exhaustive that nobody can claim they weren’t disclosed to, even though nobody actually reads them.

That’s not transparency. That’s absurdity wrapped in compliance.

The industry needs to speak up. Document your worst examples. Submit feedback to REIQ. Push back on unworkable requirements.

Because three months in, this isn’t working, and everyone knows it.

* Haesley Cush is an auctioneer and the co-founder of the Ray White Collective.

The post New Queensland property forms slammed as ‘ridiculous’ and ‘comprehensively useless’ appeared first on realestate.com.au.

The silly season might be peppered with beach days and family gatherings, but it can also be a surprisingly savvy time of year to buy a home if, of course, you can get approved for a mortgage.

Many Australians hit the pause button on house hunting until January, however those buyers who do stay in the game over the holiday period could discover there’s less competition and more motivated sellers.

While it might be the right moment to make an offer, navigating the home loan process in December requires strategy. With many lenders and solicitor’s offices operating on skeleton staff, a switched-on buyer will be in the best position to move quickly.

Purchasers who plan ahead, get their finances ready, keep their spending in check, and have experts to lean on, can take action while their competition is in holiday mode.

Start early to get ahead

Timing is often the biggest hurdle for house hunters in December. Lender approval windows which usually take just a few days can stretch out into weeks as staff take annual leave and public holidays get in the way of doing business. Even applications started before Christmas can sit on the shelf until January.

Brisbane-based Mortgage Choice broker Laura Nadal says borrowers should plan for up to one month of disruptions around the end of the year.

“From that last week before Christmas, you can pretty much guarantee your solicitor will go away on holiday and won’t come back until some point in January,” she notes. “That whole period is often a complete shutdown.”

Nadal explains that organisation is the key to avoiding added stress at an already stressful time.

“When you’re ready, put an application in straight away,” she says. “At the moment, lenders are still working really hard so they can get approvals done before that Christmas closure.

“Have all your bank statements handy, all your payslips, identification, tax returns, proof of savings and statements from any loans or credit cards. If you haven’t got all your documents in by the first week of December though, you could be looking at pre-approval in January.”

Eliminate debt and get pre-approved

Summer is prime time for overspending, and budgets can quickly blow out, so borrowers should be aware that a flamboyant festive season can raise concerns for lenders and impact borrowing capacity. 

Your debt-to-income ratio is a key factor lenders use to determine your borrowing capacity. It is important to remember that bank and credit card statements from the holiday period will be scrutinised to identify spending patterns, especially over the past three to six-month period. New commitments to ‘buy now, pay later’ services – commonly used around Christmas –  could also act against you.

“If you have a credit card or personal loan, it’s a good idea to get rid of those debts straight away because it may take time for those companies to to send you a closure letter,” Nadal says.

Serious sellers are ready to move

The holiday break can present a unique window for motivated purchasers. Some sellers list because they’re relocating for work in the new year, are moving to start a new school year, or are just eager to wrap up a sale before Christmas. In these instances, your pre-approval status becomes a powerful tool as it shows sellers and agents that you’re ready to buy.

“As long as you’re applying by the first week of December, they’ll likely have time to process the loan application and give you approval by the end of this year,” Nadal says.

For borrowers who already have the green light from their lender, she adds it’s just as important to be aware of the pre-approval time limit as most are only valid for 90 days.

“Don’t worry too much. If your pre-approval times out, then as long as your situation hasn’t changed it likely wouldn’t be too hard to get it extended,” she says. “But just remember, these things do take time.

“To be on the safe side, consider getting it extended before Christmas even if it hasn’t run out yet.”

Lean on experts to navigate the season

Mortgage brokers are in a unique position, given that they can liaise directly with several lenders, escalate issues and negotiate timelines, therefore removing anxiety for overwhelmed buyers.

Brokers can also show borrowers a panel of lenders to find competitive interest rates and practical product features.

“If speed is of the essence, you may have to compromise on certain features in your home loan; like interest rates or fees,” Nadal says. “We have 36 lenders on our books so chances are there’ll be a lender that suits what you need at the time.”

Depending on which lender you go with, they will have differing cut off periods for processing loans.

“It’s crucial that you find out from your broker each bank’s time frame to get approved before the end of December,” Nadal adds.

Clear communication with your broker, solicitor, and the real estate agent will help you navigate the purchasing process successfully during the busy season.

“Speak to your solicitor early on and ask them what you need to be aware of before putting in your offer,” Nadal concludes.

“If you need to, make an offer subject to finance with an extended timeframe, maybe three weeks instead of one. Whatever amount of time they think you will need.”

This article first appeared on Mortgage Choice and has been republished with permission.

The post How to get a home loan in time for Christmas appeared first on realestate.com.au.

In the mortgage industry, we love to talk about technology, market cycles, and rate movement, but there is one topic that still gets treated like a soft skill even though it determines almost every outcome — culture.

Culture is not a perk. It is not a slogan on a wall. It is the operating system that powers customer acquisition, team performance, recruiting, and long-term growth. And at a time when the fastest growing share of new mortgages comes from first-time buyers and diverse or emerging market segments, culture is no longer optional. It is the strategy.

I learned about culture’s role in trust building long before I had a title. I grew up in a low-income community where people survived by leaning on one another. My grandfather took me to the barbershop every week, even though he was bald. I used to joke that he went for the gossip, not the haircut. What I did not understand then was that the barbershop was a community institution of trust. People traded advice, shared opportunities, and helped one another navigate life. It was trust in action. It was community. It was culture. That simple environment shaped the way I lead today.

Trust is the only thing that can cut through fear, complexity, and industry jargon. And as the market evolves, trust is increasingly the first thing first-time buyers are looking for. Today’s borrower, especially the emerging homebuyer, is walking into the market with real concerns. Rising costs, confusing guidelines, cultural barriers, past financial trauma, and years of hearing that homeownership is not for them. This group does not want marketing. They want guidance. They want someone who speaks plainly, listens without judgment, and meets them where they are, in the barber or beauty shop, at the pulpit, and at the corner store.

This is where inclusive leadership, culture building, and market outreach collide. Not as separate ideas, but as one strategy. Inclusion happens when people know they belong, they are respected, and they can speak honestly without punishment. When truth surfaces, it becomes fuel for growth and innovation. Innovation does not come from people who are scared. It comes from people who feel seen and trusted.

Team composition matters. Representation matters. Communication style matters. If your staff does not resemble your market, you are competing with one hand tied behind your back. When borrowers see someone who understands their story or hear someone who communicates in their language, the whole experience changes. Fear drops. Confidence rises. Suddenly, the homeownership dream feels possible.

Inclusive leadership is not an HR trend. It is a customer acquisition strategy. You can buy marketing, leads, and even talent. You cannot buy culture. Culture is the unseen engine behind every number you brag about. It decides how your team reacts when the pressure hits. It decides whether your best people become recruiters or flight risks.

At Southern Bancorp, we built a mortgage team grounded in this philosophy. This was not accidental. It was intentional, and it changed everything. We train cultural fluency in underwriting. We train effective communication that makes sense to the communities we serve. And we encourage our staff to stay connected to their local institutions of trust —barbershops, churches, community centers, and corner stores. These are not marketing channels. They are places where people tell the truth about their fears and hopes, where business happens as a byproduct of trust.

Here is what happens when you build culture first and lead with education as your marketing tool. Loan officers get warm introductions from trusted community partners, not cold leads. Processors receive cleaner files because borrowers understand the rules of engagement and process. Leaders spend less time firefighting and more time coaching. Teams collaborate more naturally because everyone believes in the mission. And customers show up educated, prepared, and confident, which raises both production and performance.

This type of alignment is not magic. It is culture building that starts with respect and builds trust on the ground and online. The data proves it. Companies with inclusive teams and strong cultures grow faster and outperform competitors. Belonging builds speed. It builds creativity. It keeps people engaged long after the applause fades. When people feel safe, they take smart risks. They share better ideas. They build something worth staying for. That kind of ROI shows up in both your margins and your mission.

As leaders, we cannot afford to keep treating culture as an afterthought. Culture is the new competitive advantage. It is what allows a team to navigate complex borrowers, uncertain markets, and shifting regulations. It is also what allows a community to trust you enough to let you guide them through one of the biggest financial decisions of their life.

If we want to grow, we must be willing to lead differently. Start where trust already lives. Build teams that mirror the market. Teach with clarity. Follow up with personalization. Listen before trying to sell. Finally, hold culture with the same seriousness you hold production.

Because in today’s market, culture is not part of the business. Culture is the business.

Jeremy Davis is….
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of HousingWire’s editorial department and its owners. To contact the editor responsible for this piece: zeb@hwmedia.com.