From one-bedder to elite estate: How Cate Blanchett rose through the property ranks

The year 1996 was a momentous one for two-time Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett. She met Andrew Upton, now her husband, she was nominated for a Green Room Award for her performance as Ophelia in Neil Armfield’s production of Hamlet and she made her first foray into the Sydney housing market.

That one-bedroom pad on the ground floor of a block of 12 apartments was humble compared with the property heights she has since risen to – it’s most notable feature was its position a block from the beach.

Five years later, and timed to make good on soaring apartment values, the Brook Street apartment was sold under the hammer for $358,000 – $60,000 above the reserve.

At the time, Blanchett and Upton had already upgraded to a larger Coogee home, paying $441,000 in 1998 for a two-bedder in another art deco block closer to the beach, with ocean views from the loggia-style balcony.

By the time Blanchett sold her second Coogee apartment – more than doubling her money with a $950,000 sale in 2011 – she had not only cemented her reputation as an international movie star, but had bought her first Sydney trophy house.

The 1877 landmark residence Bulwarra was bought in 2004 for $10 million from merchant banker Jim Dominquez and his wife, Suzanne, and was soon redesigned and doubled in size by architects Dr Stephen Lesiuk and Nadine Alwill.

Their first and only investment apartment followed in 2013 for $1.92 million for a two-bedder in a waterfront block in Elizabeth Bay. At the time, it was widely rumoured they had bought it for their children.

The following year they added a riverfront holiday home at Berowra Creek for $1.495 million, bought from Fortescue Metals chief executive Elizabeth Gaines.

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A few months before Upton’s tenure as artistic director of Sydney Theatre Company was up in late 2015, and amid plans to relocate to the UK, Bulwarra was listed for $20 million. Three weeks later a property developer from China, Richard Mingfeng Gu, exchanged on it for $19.8 million.

But Blanchett’s sale had been caught in the headwinds of China’s crackdown on capital outflows. Gu was unable to settle on the property and it was returned to the market the following year. It sold again in early 2017 for a suburb high of $18 million to UK-based expat Katrina Chandler, wife of investment banker Chris Barter.

Blanchett and her clan are now based in East Sussex, where they bought their Bulwarra replacement home Highwell House two years ago for $6.25 million, but not before they took the keys to another notable piece of Sydney real estate.

The two-storey apartment in the CBD’s landmark Astor building was once owned by Barry Humphries, but was later owned by Mark Bouris, who sold it to Blanchett and Upton three years ago for more than $8 million.