Celebrity real estate: Here's what it could cost you each month to live like a Hemsworth

Last year, cosmetics mogul and reality star Kylie Jenner bought a property in the ultra-exclusive Los Angeles enclave of Holmby Hills. If you’re the kind of person who loves to scroll through photos of celebrity real estate ‒ I for one love to have a stickybeak at houses I could never afford ‒ then the pics are really something to behold.

Kylie Jenner’s compound has all the luxuries you’d expect.

Jenner’s resort-style compound actually features four separate houses, which have a combined seven bedrooms and fourteen bathrooms between them. Other amenities include a chef’s kitchen, a luxury pool, a basketball court, and twenty parking spaces, in case Kylie wants to have a few friends around to watch movies in her outdoor cinema.

If you’re anything like me, you might also daydream about the house you could buy if you had that Kylie-Jenner-kinda money. This (one) of hers is not currently for sale, but earlier this year, just to give you an idea of what you might be up for, a house in the same Holmby Hills neighbourhood went on the market for the eye-watering sum of $70 million (over $90 million AUD).

While we very much doubt that Kylie herself has a mortgage to worry about, Canstar crunched the numbers, finding that a hypothetical home buyer looking to move into her neighbourhood could see themselves forking out close to $320,000 in monthly repayments for 30 years. This business of “keeping up with the Kardashians” truly could be quite expensive!

After that, we decided to turn our attention a bit closer to home, and look at some of the biggest recent celebrity real estate purchases in Australia. If you wanted to live in a Byron Bay compound like the one Chris Hemsworth built for his family, or a Northern Beaches mansion like the one recently snapped up by Jennifer Hawkins, how much would you end up paying per month?

Below is a list that we made, purely for fun, of what your average mortgage payment might be if you were to live in the kind of mansion that our favourite film and TV celebrities call home.

The below calculations were done by Canstar on 31/05/2021. Note that these hypothetical monthly repayments assume a loan interest rate of 3.22% with principal and interest repayments over a 30 year loan term, where 80% of the property value is borrowed. The property prices mentioned are based on reports of approximate sale price or estimated value. 

Chris Hemsworth ‒ Actor

Much like the man himself, Chris Hemsworth’s Byron Bay compound (on Bundjalung country) is quite large and imposing. The actor and his wife Elsa Pataky began construction on the property in 2017, and some locals were upset by the enormous, modernist structure, complaining that it was “inappropriate” for the area. Indeed, the place might be more appropriate as a headquarters for the Avengers, should they require one in Australia.

Amenities include six bedrooms, a fully decked-out home gym (highly necessary so that Chris can keep that Thor rig in peak condition), a spa with a steam room, and an enormous mural by artist Otis Hope Carey. The house also features a 50m rooftop infinity pool, said to have cost at least $400,000 to install.

Chris Hemsworth’s Byron Bay compound features an enormous mural entitled ‘Darrundang Gaagal’, which translates to “thanking the ocean”.

The house cost an estimated $20 million, and based on our calculations, now construction is complete, the property value might be closer to $30 million. If we as mere mortals were to be paying that off on a 30-year mortgage, we’d be up for a hefty $104,055 a month. By the hammer of Thor, that’s a lot!

Mike Cannon-Brookes ‒ Atlassian co-founder

Properties in Sydney’s Northern Beaches region (on Guringai country) can be pricey ‒ just ask Mike Cannon-Brookes, co-founder and co-CEO of the Australian software company Atlassian,  who set a record for the area when he paid $24.5 million for a Newport Beach mansion in 2020. The luxurious house, built by supermodel Jennifer Hawkins and her partner Jake Wall, was on the market with an asking price of $21 million when the software developer and his wife snapped it up.

That may seem like a lot, but this place isn’t even the priciest one in Cannon-Brookes’ portfolio. Back in 2018, he famously snapped up Australia’s most expensive house, the historic Fairwater estate in Double Bay, for an eye-watering $100 million. Those Sydney Harbour views must be really, really nice for that kind of money.

If you were to be paying off Cannon-Brookes’ Northern Beaches property, then by Canstar’s calculations, your monthly mortgage might be somewhere in the vicinity of $84,978.

Matt Damon ‒ Actor

Matt Damon is another one of a growing number of celebrities who have made a home in the once-sleepy beachside town of Byron. He started out by renting in the area, in a house next door to his mate, Chris Hemsworth. The Broken Head property was worth an estimated $4 million. He liked Byron so much that he decided to buy there, throwing down a rumored $22 million for a luxury home overlooking Wategos Beach.

The actor and his wife Luciana snapped up the home late last year, after it had been on the market for just four and a half days. The house boasts dazzling ocean views, a heated infinity pool, high ceilings and large entertaining spaces. If you were to throw down $22 million for a beachside home like this, Canstar estimates your monthly payment on a 30-year mortgage would be around $76,307.

Zoe Foster Blake & Hamish Blake – Author & broadcaster

Last year, the beloved twosome of Hamish Blake and Zoe Foster Blake relocated from Melbourne to Sydney, with the radio host and skincare mogul/author purchasing a property in Vaucluse (on Gadigal and Birrabirragal country). This affluent locale is one of Sydney’s most sought-after suburbs, and the five-bedroom house came with quite the price tag ‒ the couple paid a reported $8.925 million for it. For that kind of money, Canstar estimates you’d be looking at a monthly mortgage payment of $30,956 over 30 years.

Hamish and Zoe Foster Blake recently moved their family to Sydney.

Jennifer Hawkins – Model

After selling their Newport home to Mike Cannon-Brookes for $24.5 million, Jennifer Hawkins and her husband Jake Wall could have had their pick of almost any house up or down the east coast. The pair chose to remain in Sydney’s Northern beaches region, spending $6.95 million on a property once owned by the famed singer Dame Joan Sutherland.

The 3,300 sqm property is the largest oceanfront estate in Whale Beach (on Guringai country), and the couple are reportedly planning a $3.03 million renovation, with a half-size basketball court proposed for the property. Based on the purchase price of $6.95 million (without the extra renovations factored in), Canstar estimates that your monthly mortgage payment would be in the region of $24,106 if you wanted to call this place home.

Liam Hemsworth ‒ Actor

Last year, Liam and Luke Hemsworth both joined their brother in snapping up properties in the celebrity enclave of Byron Bay. Luke bought a $4.9 million home in Suffolk Park, the same home where Chris and his wife lived while constructing their enormous compound at Broken Head. Liam, meanwhile, paid $6.5 million for a five-bedroom house in Newrybar, which may be a modest amount by the Asgardian standards of Chris’s home, but is still enough to make it the most expensive home ever sold in the area.

All three Hemsworth brothers now call Byron home.

Liam’s luxury hinterland retreat, a former wedding venue, features two wings built around a swimming pool, and the exterior includes tropical gardens, a detached entertainment pavilion, and a lawn big enough for three helicopters to land, should the brothers really wish to show off at some point. For this place, you’d be looking at an average monthly mortgage payment of $22,545 over thirty years.

Sophie Monk ‒ TV star

Sophie Monk ‒ Love Island host, founding member of Bardot, former Bachelorette and generally a very entertaining individual ‒ now calls the NSW Central Coast home, after purchasing a property there last year for $2.25 million. The single-storey house, between Wamberal and Forresters beaches (on Darkinjung country) has a luxury master bedroom with an oversized walk-in, which is a must for storing Sophie’s many red carpet looks. The three-bedroom house, on a tree-lined hinterland block, also features such amenities as a home theatre and a lavish outdoor entertaining area with a fireplace and pizza oven.

Sophie Monk now calls the NSW Central Coast home.

If you were to buy a house of comparable price, your bank manager may well ask “will you accept this monthly mortgage payment of $7,804?”.

Zac Efron ‒ Actor

Zac Efron appears to have fallen in love with Australia, and now, like increasing numbers of Hollywood folk, it seems he’s keen to call our country home. Last year, the actor spent $2 million on a block of land in the Tweed Valley (on Bundjalung country) in northern NSW. It sounds like an idyllic setting ‒ the block reportedly boasts mountain views and a section of rainforest, and there are a variety of creeks, waterfalls and spring-fed dams to splash around in.

It’s unclear whether the actor has started building on the block yet, but if you yourself were paying off a $2 million mortgage on a block like this with a house attached over 30 years, your monthly repayment would likely be in the region of $6,937.

Compare home loans

While it would cost a fortune to meet the monthly mortgage payments on many of these celebrity properties, there would also be other considerations. If you’re living in a palatial home like Chris Hemsworth’s Byron compound, you’ll also have to factor in other expenses like maintenance and upkeep and council rates, not to mention the cost of home insurance.

Putting the repayments on these celebrity houses into perspective, Canstar research has found that the monthly repayments on the average Australian home loan ($477,548) would be $2,070 while the repayments on a $1 million loan amount would be $4,336 (assuming the average variable rate of 3.22% and a 20% deposit).

And of course, one day, if you do end up as the next face of the Marvel Cinematic Universe or strike it rich with your own wildly successful cosmetics company, you know roughly how much you might need to spend to live next door to one of these celebs!

Cover image source: Featureflash Photo Agency/Shutterstock.com

Compare Home Loans with Canstar

• 1-year fixed
• 3-year fixed
• 5-year fixed