- Jacinda Ardern and Clarke Gayford reportedly bought a A$5.3m home in Dee Why.
- The purchase nearly doubles Dee Why’s typical property value and triples their Auckland home’s RV.
- Dee Why offers beaches, surf heritage, cafés and buses, while shark attacks have unsettled swimmers.
The Sydney suburb that’s now home to Dame Jacinda Ardern and her husband Clarke Gayford has a relaxed, surfie vibe – and sharks.
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The Sydney Morning Herald reported this week that the former New Zealand Prime Minister and her family reportedly paid A$5.3 million for a house in Dee Why.
The price was the suburb’s highest this year, and almost double what properties there typically fetch (it’s also triple the RV of the Auckland home Ardern and Gayford sold in July).
Dee Why is one of dozens of suburbs that dot Sydney’s coveted northern beaches coastline, stretching from fashionable Manly to ultra-exclusive and super-expensive Palm Beach, home to a host of high-profile but fiercely private residents.
It’s a diverse market, with units available for under A$1m and houses in the A$2m-plus range, with the biggest and most expensive properties sitting on the suburb’s headland, which is where agents believe Ardern and Gayford have set up camp.
Ardern and husband Clarke Gayford have sold their home in Auckland and have settled into life in Australia. Photo / Getty Images
Ardern speaks onstage at the 40th Anniversary ARIA Hall of Fame event in Sydney in June this year. Photo / Getty Images
Domain property site describes the suburb as attractive for buyers “who prefer to spend most of their time outdoors and at the beach. Apartments – largely from the 1960s and 70s – dominate Dee Why’s residential streetscape. Fishermen’s cottages and knockdown-rebuilds are also familiar sights dotted around the suburb”.
“When you combine the km-long stretch of beach and lagoon, with gorgeous headland parklands at Ted Jackson Reserve and Aussie bushland at Stony Range Regional Botanic Garden, it’s not hard to see why locals never want to leave Dee Why.”
The suburb has undergone significant development in recent years, with a wave of high-rise projects expanding the range of options for buyers. Its beachfront precinct has also been transformed into a cosmopolitan hub of bars, restaurants, cafes and a public swimming pool.
Lisa Novak of Novak Properties said she had done some digging after hearing about Ardern’s purchase, but the location of the family’s new home seemed to be a well-kept secret.
9 Ozone Parade, in Dee Why, is one of the more expensive homes available to buy in the suburb. The five-bedroom property is on the headlands, reportedly where Ardern has bought. Photo / Supplied
A$5m was big money for Dee Why, Novak said, and would buy a beautiful home. “I sell properties right down along the beachfront in Dee Why, and they have achieved circa A$3.5m, so that’s definitely getting up there.”
She added that Dee Why also had its own little micro markets, “so as you push down closer to the beachfront and the headland, where you’re going to get the views, up go the property prices, and I’d expect that’s where Ms Ardern has [bought]”.
“If I were going to be playing guessing games, I would say she’s probably sitting on the cusp of Dee Why and probably North Curl Curl [a neighbouring suburb] because that’s where the property prices tend to go up.”
Property prices tended to rise the closer you got to the tourist hotspot of Manly, about 5-6km south, with Novak telling OneRoof that a five-million-dollar house in Dee Why would cost close to A$10m in Manly.
“I actually sold a very run-down house very close to the beachside in Manly about three years ago, and it was 400sqm, an original 1970s, and I got A$21.5m.”
Novak said people liked Dee Why for its accessibility because while the Northern Beaches did not have a train line, Dee Why had a good bus interchange, with services running every four minutes and the commute to the CBD taking around 40 minutes.
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“Dee Why used to be the sort of more affordable alternative, I guess, to some of its neighbouring beachside suburbs but now it's really developed its own identity and I guess it’s very appealing.”
She added: “It’s completely gentrified because of all the development. It used to look a little bit old like it needed a bit of a facelift and it’s certainly had that. Buyers now come to Dee Why knowing that it’s had a lot of work done to it. It’s also got great proximity to shops and things like that.
“I think it’s a wonderful community. [Ardern] will no doubt be welcomed with open arms.”
George Bachtis of McGrath Estate Agents said there were lots of beautiful homes on the headland. “It’s certainly a sought-after pocket. There’s a real café/restaurant culture at Dee Why beach as well.”
He added: “It’s not a cheap area to live. Northern Beaches is certainly probably top three or four regions or areas of Sydney that are the most sought after, that’s for sure.”
He said Ardern had bought at a good time, given recent changes in Australia’s property tax laws. “The Northern Beaches is pretty laid-back – very different to the eastern suburbs of Sydney. Even though it’s an affluent area, it’s definitely a more laid-back area, so maybe that’s the appeal.”
A sign reading “Beach Closed” is put on Dee Why Beach following a string of shark attacks. Photo / Getty Images
Dee Why’s surf breaks are world-class and the suburb still clings to its surfie roots. Photo / Getty Images
Surfer Wayne Ryan, who owns Line Up Surf Australia in Dee Why, said the suburb was a beautiful one, although he wasn’t sure everyone would welcome the former Prime Minister because of her “left ideology”.
Dee Why, he said, was renowned for its surf beach. “It’s an interesting surf town. It’s got a lot of heritage in surfing. As a matter of fact, the first ever world champion, Midget [Bernard ‘Midget’ Farrelly], was from here.”
The famous Dee Why Point surf break around the rocks was once considered to be one of the top 50 in the world. And while Dee Why’s beachfront was cosmopolitan, it only took a couple of streets back to find real suburban Australia, Ryan said.
Manly, on the other hand, was a tourist town with a lot of energy, “but a lot of people go, ‘I’d rather go down to Manly for the day and hang out and come home to the quieter Dee Why’.”
Like many other popular Sydney beach suburbs, Dee Why has had problems with sharks. A great white killed a local surfer last year, while an 11-year-old swimmer had a large chunk of his surfboard bitten off by a shark earlier this year.
Ryan said the fatality had shocked the community, he said, but people were back in the water, and there were drones in the sky looking for sharks (he noted that a shark turned up the other day when the drone operator was at lunch).
He said he had surfed around the world and had never been overly scared, though every surfer looked over their shoulder from time to time. “But you have to keep it in perspective and, you know, the odds of being attacked by your own dog are greater than a shark.”
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