Giaan Rooney is very happy with the sale price of her Broadbeach Waters home. Picture: Jerad Williams
Olympic swimmer Giaan Rooney sold her dream house under the hammer on the weekend for $2.206m.
Ms Rooney took to Instagram on Friday night to share how she was trying not to “freak out” about the auction, and asked for tips on how to deal with pre-auction anxious-ness.
Giaan Rooney had pre-auction nerves.
She need not have been so worried.
Eight registered bidders turned out to compete for the waterfront home at 25 Kalimna Drive, Broadbeach Waters, which Giaan built with her husband Sam Levett, and intended to be their forever home.
The house at 25 Kalimna Drive, Broadbeach Waters, sold to a buyer from Wagga.
The bidding rose steadily, with proceedings pausing momentarily to declare the house on the market.
It sold a couple of bids later to a buyer from Wagga, who is looking to relocate to the Gold Coast.
Marketing agent Ronnie Jackson of Ray White Broadbeach said Giaan was very happy with the sale, which achieved a good price for the area.
The buyer loved the fact it wasn’t a standard Hamptons home.
About 54 groups inspected the property before it went to auction, ending a three and a half-week campaign.
“It was obviously a quirky home,” Ms Jackson said. “Not your average Hamptons house, which the buyer really liked.”
Brisbane-born Rooney, 38, who retired from swimming aged 23, picked up the property for $860,000 when she moved back to the Gold Coast from Melbourne in 2015.
A happier Giaan Rooney and husband Sam Levett after the auction.
Carrying out an extensive renovation, the couple transformed the home into a “hard-wearing yet ‘homely’ abode that catered to every member of our family”.
The sale allows the Rooneys to move permanently to the macadamia farm in Northern NSW that they bought in December, to begin the next chapter of their lives.
“We now have the opportunity to give our kids the rural lifestyle my husband, Sam, grew up with,” Ms Rooney said.
Giaan and Sam had an active hand in the renovations.
The sale follows that of fellow former Olympic swimmer Grant Hackett who recently offloaded his holiday villa on Hedges Avenue in Mermaid Beach for $2.625m.
Mr Hackett did not have to endure the pre-auction nerves after he accepted the offer three weeks before the scheduled auction day, taking the house of the market.
Fellow Olympian Cam McEvoy has also just listed his Isle of Capri home and is happy to accept Bitcoin as payment for its sale.
He has yet to set a price for the four-bedroom, three-bathroom home he is selling through Josh Longhitano of Lucent estate agents.