Prestige Property: 18 Macgregor Avenue, Portsea VIC
This coveted coastal home boasts the ultimate pool house.
2 min
Located in one of Portsea’s most coveted streets, this elegant coastal home — designed by legendary Australian architect, Guildford Bell — is privately set back from the street with farm gates and a white pebble drive giving nothing away.
Beyond the Moonah trees, atop the cliff, appears the 5-bedroom, 5-bathroom, 2-car garage home, built upon approximately 2965sqm of land only minutes’ walk to Shelley Beach.
The inspiring entrance — with an internal courtyard — provides a sense of arrival for what is a meticulously presented single level home, with a classic coastal getaway feel.
The property features the main house, complete with 4-bedrooms and 4-bathrooms, and boasts light-timber floors and panelling on the walls, with a vaulted ceiling in the living room further adding to the home’s coastal allure.
Here, the home’s airy design — courtesy of the light palette of white and blonde — hosts a luxurious entertaining space dominated by the kitchen, which features a combination of blonde timbers and stone veneers. Also here, the living space sees a fireplace for chillier nights while sliding glass doors allow for seamless access to the outdoor entertaining area.
Elsewhere, the home’s accommodation is broken up into wings, with one flank of the house holding three bedrooms, two of which hold their own ensuites. The opposite side of the house sees the master suite complete built-in robes, expansive coastal themed ensuite and private study.
Outside is a scene from a Mediterranean village, with the alfresco entertaining area adorned by bougainvillea and a stretch of rolling green turf.
Beyond the immediate outdoor area, the property is privy to its very own, resort-style pool house. Completely equipped and self-contained, the pavilion sees its own sunken lounge —ideal for relaxing with a Mai Tai — alongside the pool itself. The accommodation features its own open living space with fireplace, galley style kitchenette and bedroom with ensuite.
Further features offered by the property include the double lock up garage, with off-street parking for four additional cars, CCTV, fully irrigated garden with bore water, garden lighting, wired in audio system and more.
The listing is with Patrick Skin (+61 418 378 759) and Rob Curtain (+61 418 310 870) of Peninsula Sotheby’s International Realty. Price guide; $8.75 million – $9.5 million. Melbournesothebysrealty.com
Early indications from several big regional real-estate boards suggest March was overall another down month.
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Early indications from several big regional real-estate boards suggest March was overall another down month.
3 minOTTAWA–The nascent recovery in Canada’s housing market has become a casualty of the trade dispute with the U.S.
The latest national home-resale data are due out Tuesday, but early indications from several big regional real-estate boards suggest March was overall another down month as many prospective buyers exercised caution.
The recent weakness in home sales has dimmed the previously brighter outlook for the property market coming into 2025, when buyers were encouraged by the Bank of Canada’s aggressive interest-rate cuts.
“The chills the U.S. trade war has sent through participants in the housing market are getting frostier,” said Robert Hogue , assistant chief economist at Royal Bank of Canada.
Hogue said resales are down materially in a number of markets two months running, and home prices in several markets are coming under pressure as inventories rise. And although Canada was spared additional levies when President Trump unveiled so-called reciprocal tariffs on dozens of countries earlier this month, no meaningful rebound is likely so long as trade uncertainty lingers, he said.
Home buyers in Toronto, Canada’s most populous city and the country’s financial hub, aren’t turning up for the usual spring pickup in property-market activity.
Sales in the Greater Toronto Area slumped 23.1% in March from a year earlier, as new listings for the region jumped close to 29%, according to the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board. That marked the worst month of resales since 1998.
The board’s chief information officer, Jason Mercer , said many potential home buyers were likely taking a wait-and-see approach given the economic worries as well as a pending federal election. “Homebuyers need to feel their employment situation is solid before committing to monthly mortgage payments over the long term,” he said, adding that ownership has become more affordable and prices in the area fell about 3.8% year on year in March.
Uncertainty is also weighing on the housing market in Calgary, the biggest city in oil-rich Alberta. The city’s real-estate board said realtors reported a 19% drop in sales of existing homes from last year, with a similar trend of improving supply and a sharp increase in the average number of days that homes were on the market.
On the West Coast, home sales registered in the metro Vancouver area of British Columbia were the lowest for March since 2019, falling 13.4% on a year earlier and coming in close to 37% below the 10-year seasonal average, while active listings continued to rise.
There are some areas of resilience. The Quebec Professional Association of Real Estate Brokers said total sales in the province were up 9% year on year in March. Still, RBC’s Hogue estimated Montreal sales in March were down about 15% from December seasonally adjusted, effectively rolling back the advance since the end of last summer.
The most recent national data for the country, from the Canadian Real Estate Association, showed resales dropped 9.8% month over month in February, when homebuyers may also have been put off by harsh winter storms in parts of the country. That marked the sharpest fall since May 2022 and brought the level of sales to their lowest level since November 2023, snapping signs that activity had been picking up in recent months.
Rishi Sondhi , an economist at Toronto-Dominion Bank, in a recent report estimated the country was tracking toward a double-digit quarterly decline in Canadian home sales and a mid-single-digit drop in Canadian average home prices for the first three months of 2025. That is much weaker than a pre-Trump inauguration forecast made in December that projected a loosening in federal mortgage rules, lower interest rates and continued economic growth would fuel a modest gain in sales and prices.
Central-bank officials are set to decide Wednesday on monetary policy, but they have signaled a cautious approach to rates as they balance the prospect of tariffs stoking price pressures against the likelihood that they will dampen demand and weigh on the economy. That could mean the Bank of Canada will pause after seven straight cuts to its policy rate.
Housing is a hot topic for party leaders campaigning ahead of the April 28 election, with both the incumbent Liberal Party and opposition Conservatives proposing tax cuts and incentives to encourage buyers and builders.
The outlook for new homes has also dimmed with the tariff threat. The value of residential-building permits issued in February fell 2.9% from a month prior, adding to a retreat in January that took back some of the surge in intentions in the final month of last year, Statistics Canada data last week showed.
Architect Mark Rios and his husband, Dr. Guy Ringler, spent 18 months renovating the house, which was originally designed by John Elgin Woolf.
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