These gorgeous homes are our weekly prestige picks.
Kate Langbroek recently got a chance to look inside some of the most extravagant homes in Australia for upcoming TV show Unreal Estate.
What the radio and TV host found, aside from large rooms, custom-fit marble benchtops and incredible views, was something common to nearly every home, and which the owners didn’t want her to share on camera.
“In every single house we went to, there tended to be a room that was just like the junk room, where there would be an old brown vinyl couch, a TV with all the cords coming out of the wall, some s****y IKEA bookcase with a couple of books in it and that’s the room where you got the impression these people went to be on their own and relax,” Langbroek said.
Unreal Estate hosts Cam Knight and Kate Langbroek. Photo: Channel Nine
“Nearly every house had a room like that; it just became funny.”
Langbroek felt that in a lot of cases, these were the only rooms in the house where the owners got some alone time.
“At this level of expense, not only in the house itself but in the maintenance of the house, you’re really never alone,” she said.
One of the grand homes to be shown on Unreal Estate. Photo: Channel Nine
“You look out the window and there’s someone trimming the hedges, or someone cleaning the pool or there’s a housekeeper turning on the lights so these people are never alone.”
Langbroek was an easy fit to host this show because, she admits, she can barely go past an open house without wanting to go inside.
“If we’re in the car, or even if it’s a flat in our street, we just always go and have a look, I love it,” she said.
Unreal Estate promises a look inside some of Australia’s grandest homes. Photo: Channel Nine
“I like to see the house but what I like more than that is to see how people live in it so I don’t like an `open for inspection’ where they’ve obviously got rental furniture. I don’t like that.
“I like to see what’s on their bedside tables and I like to see what’s in their pantry. I just like to see how people live. It’s extremely revealing.”
Langbroek and her co-host Cam Knight get to peek inside country estates, beach homes and grand mansions but she couldn’t picture herself setting up permanently in any of them.
“I really didn’t think I could live in any of those houses but I could have a hell of a holiday … in nearly all of them,” she said.
But there’s still one wealthy home she would like to see the inside of.
“James Packer, his home with Mariah or even on his super yacht. I would love to see inside that,” she said.
Unreal Estate airs on Tuesday at 8.40pm on Nine
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