TENNIS COURTS LOB HIGH RETURNS FOR PRIME MARKET
Increasingly rare and sought out, residential courts drive a 230% sales surge.
By Terry Christodoulou
Mon, Feb 22, 2021 5:41am
2 min
2 min
Driven by shifting lifestyle changes brought about by COVID-19 and furthered by rising market confidence, new research has outed a dramatic spike in the sale of Australian super-prime properties holding tennis courts.
Knight Frank’s inaugural Australian Residential Tennis Court Premium report has found sales of super-prime property with courts spiked during 2020 – $682.8m transacted across 38 sales, up 230% on 2019’s 14 sales.
Properties with tennis courts commanded a 22% higher sale price than those without, the average price rising by 1.6% to $18 million in 2020. The research also found nearly a quarter (23%) of all super-prime residential 2020 sales were properties with courts.
“In 2020, Sydney saw $436.6 million of tennis court-featured super-prime sales across 22 transactions, although this total volume fell short by 3 per cent of surpassing its highest volume reached in 2018,” said Knight Frank’s Head of Residential Research Michelle Ciesielski.
Beyond volume, a cultural shift driven by the pandemic is said to have heightened purchaser desires.
“Australians transformed the way they lived in 2020 due to COVID-19, with the role of the home expanding to become a place of work, education and vacation due to periodic lockdowns during the pandemic,” added Knight Frank’s National Head of Residential, Shaye Harris.
Based on sales figures since 2011, the top three performing suburbs for super-prime properties with tennis courts were Melbourne’s Toorak (39 sales), Sydney’s Bellevue Hill (23 sales) and Vaucluse and Mosman, which were equal third with 16 sales.
Last June Tennis Australia reported a significant rise in interest in the sport – online booking data across 173 venues revealing that the number of court bookings more than doubled from 10,912 in May 2019 to 22,569 in May 2020.
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The imposing stone structures, with towers, turrets and a hot tub room, lord over the landscape near the mountain resort town of Sandpoint.
By Liz Lucking
Mon, Jul 13, 2026 2 min
2 min
Idaho is not a place that’s often associated with Medieval castles, but a pair have just hit the market for $6.25 million.
The imposing stone structures have towers, turrets, ramparts, arrow-slit windows and even a drawbridge, and might just be the most authentic-looking castles this side of the Atlantic.
“Who expects to see a castle like this in Idaho?” said listing agent Brenda Burk of Coldwell Banker Schneidmiller Realty, who brought the property to the market last week. They are, she said, “extremely unusual.”
Schweitzer Castle and Château de Melusine, as they’re known, stand within Schweitzer Mountain Resort in the Selkirk Mountains and overlook the nearby mountain resort town of Sandpoint. They take in panoramic views of Lake Pend Oreille, Idaho’s largest lake.
The pair of ski-in/ski-out homes each have three bedrooms, two bathrooms and three stories, Burk explained. They are “so authentic,” she said. “Every single stone was handlaid.”
Schweitzer Castle, she said, wasn’t built for “functionality,” but has been modernized and adapted and now has everything a 21st-century residence requires, along with a dungeon, which for some buyers may also be a requisite.
The chateau, meanwhile, has a hot tub room with mountain views, as well as a garage.
The property is being sold furnished, and will come complete with the hand-carved statues, armor, mounted swords, stained-glass windows and a host of antiques dating to the 15th and 16th centuries.
The owner, an antique collector who couldn’t be reached for comment, “is always looking for that hidden jewel and he found that here,” Burk said.
The next custodian is likely to stem from a varied pool of buyers, Burk said, that would include “the trophy-home buyer, someone who can say ‘I own a castle.’”
The property could also appeal to someone looking for a vacation home, or a multi-generational estate, and beyond that “there’s the dreamers,” she said. “We definitely try to market to people who like Medieval history or maybe do Renaissance fairs.”
The seller “really wants it to go to someone with the same passion.”
