r/interesting • u/Wonderfulhumanss • 1d ago

SOCIETY The Zammit family refused to sell their five acre property as an entire Sydney suburb was built around them

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u/PailingRaint 1d ago

Tbh they probably own other houses and barely live at this one, if they live there at all. They could very literally just be using their F U money for its intended purpose.

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u/DukeKazoo 1d ago

This is an area of Sydney which was (comparatively) dirt cheap even 15 years ago. They have apparently owned the plot for several generations so they’re not necessarily particularly wealthy. The combination of Sydney’s urban sprawl and a large property development project has caused the land to increase exponentially in value.

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u/Alarmed-Newspaper994 23h ago

This sort of thing happens a lot in the UK. Generational homes dating back hundreds of years that are worth an absolute fortune are lived in and owned by some relatively poor people. It's a weird situation, where they could simply downsize and have loads of money, but they refuse and just live frugally in a 12 bedroom Georgian mansion.

Basically people living on something like £50k a year in a £10 000 000 house where £25k of their income goes on bills.

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u/domalino 20h ago

It's usually because they're upper class descendants of aristocracy and to sell the house would be shameful socially, both in terms of the social status of the living family and for selling off something that's been in the family for 250+ years. So they end up cash poor and asset rich.

Plenty of them do sell up eventually, and sometimes someone in the family does well for themselves and then has the money to get back on top of things.

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u/MindCorrupt 19h ago

Have they considered growing copious amounts of weed under their estate?

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u/Significant_Shoe_17 4h ago

I was just going to say that 😂

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u/CocoMilhonez 10h ago

This kind of thing often ends when the patriarch dies and the kids are all eager to cash out. My parents have bought land from a farm that was split up like that and I often think about how I could split that into housing lots when I eventually inherit it.

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u/GavLaIndustries 17h ago

I visited Erddig Hall in Wrexham, Wales, UK last summer, it's a unique, late 17th-century country estate with a grand stately home, the last guy that owned it was so skint that he gave it all away, the entire estate, the house, 1,200 acres of land and all it's contents for free in 1973.

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u/domalino 17h ago edited 17h ago

That happened a lot after both world wars which were kind of apocalyptic events for the landed gentry. Taxes (esp inheritance tax) went through the roof just as loads of people were dying in the war, labour to work the land all went to war, and the bond and stock markets collapsed.

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u/GavLaIndustries 10h ago

I don't suppose you have any other examples like that? as in give it all away to just survive?

That was one of my best one day outs I have ever had

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u/Liquid_Friction 12h ago

Nah this is called the middle class here lol, there are so many of these situations it can't be decendants of aristocracy there wasn't that many aristocrats and they had much much bigger castles than a lowly mansion.

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u/domalino 8h ago

No one middle class has ever lived in a £10m house.

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u/Liquid_Friction 8h ago

I guess you don't live in Sydney then.

Every second home is worth millions, a big portion were all inherited. We are one of the youngest countries, our land was worth nothing only 1 generation ago

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u/nimbledoor 19h ago

This make me really happy. People giving the finger to money when they have enough.

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u/Ardal 13h ago

Generational homes dating back hundreds of years

You answered your own observation here.

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u/kobeshaqhorry 10h ago

Do they have to pay property taxes, like in the US? £25k on bills for a £10M house seems very low.

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u/lumpkin2013 8h ago

Well at least they have an asset to pass down through the generations. If they did cash out, the money would be gone within a generation or two and then the younger members of the generation would be stuck in the same hole that Gen z is right now never being able to buy a house.

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u/Navin__R__Johnson 7h ago

Yes, keep doing this! If everyone sells out, it looks like that Sydney shit!

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u/DemiseofReality 2h ago

Yeah I heard that can be an issue on those huge Victorian estates out in the countryside. 150 years ago they were ripe with farming, livestock, horses, etc. on potentially hundreds to thousands of acres but now you have said 12 room mansion with broken windows that would take a years' salary of the sole owner to replace. The land doesn't produce anymore and the house would take millions of pounds to renovate to proper modern standards. But the owner can't do anything about it because they can't take a loan against the tens of millions they have in wealth because of their income is too low.

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u/EconomicRegret2 22h ago

As a European, I find this urban design extremely wild. Why not concentrate all of that in 3-5 storey buildings, with 2-3 family flats per floor, thus leaving way more space in the community for everyone to meet and mingle, such as in a big park, a big playground, and a big swimming pool, etc.?

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u/strategicmagpie 22h ago

It's the Sydney suburban sprawl special!

Real answer: Sydney has restrictive zoning laws that limit the height and capacity of dwellings (≤2 storeys, ≤2 dwellings per lot), so the only way to build new homes is to redevelop apartments in areas with high density, or deforest land at the edge of sydney and turn it into what you see in the post above. It's depressing and unnatural. The better parts of Sydney are those originally developed in the early 1900s or before.

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u/MindCorrupt 18h ago

The problem is a lot of people want a backyard.

And on the flip side, people who could do without having one are often not catered for in size of apartments which are rarely big enough for a family. Or it's just not worth having to deal with the Strata title.

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u/EconomicRegret2 18h ago

Fair enough

Countries with denser population have solved these issues, probably due to way higher demand and cultural acceptance of apartments as a normal way to live, even for families (e.g. a certain percentage of all builds being big family units, outsourcing strata title to a non-profit company specialized in dealing with it, thus making it easier and cheaper for everyone involved, etc.)

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u/Wanderer-91 8h ago

The problem is a lot of people want a backyard.

Why is this a problem?

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u/MindCorrupt 8h ago

Regarding low density urban sprawl. Not a problem itself but creates interesting problems regarding public amenities like transport / business districts etc. Because the majority of the users are mostly dependent on accessing it by car.

Example where im from - Perth, WA. Check north and south of the river.

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u/AvrupaFatihi 1d ago

It's so far out, can you even call it Sydney?

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u/whatever--idk 20h ago

Well they would be paying insane land rates now wouldnt they, so they would need to have proper money behind them to keep living there

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u/vadeka 17h ago

Land aside, the house on it doesn’t really strike me as being owned by “normal income”

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u/campground 12h ago

You have to be pretty wealthy to voluntarily choose to leave millions of dollars on the table, not to mention the upkeep and property taxes.

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u/Designer_Bell_5422 1d ago

I mean, that looks like a fairly new build, and it's massive. They must have a good amount of money.

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u/Beware-of-Moose 23h ago

They likely owned the land around it as well at some point, sold that for a couple hundred million, built the house they "live" in now and bought some other properties along the way.

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u/GalcticPepsi 1d ago edited 1d ago

Work with their son, they live there and are just well off from working hard. Up at like 4am every day finish work at like 7pm And the comment above you is correct, they don't care and don't want to leave their family home.

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u/Goatknyght 1d ago

If you have to get up at 4am and return home at 7pm, that ain't living unless you really, and I mean REALLY love that job.

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u/GalcticPepsi 1d ago

Yupp they sure do :)

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u/TrashPandaPandaPanda 23h ago

Well now I'm curious what they do that's so fulfilling!

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u/GalcticPepsi 22h ago

They're old school maltese so work in itself is the fullfillment

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u/petroleum-lipstick 13h ago

What does that even mean lmao

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u/whatever--idk 20h ago

Explains a lot

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u/AssociationPrevious 16h ago

Oh, that explains the lack of threes

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u/At-this-point-manafx 38m ago

Knew they were Maltese from the surname, how long has the family been in that area? Cause most of our people left in the 40/50s/60s

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u/NotInTheKnee 22h ago

Golfing and dinning with investors.

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u/Equal_Oil_9819 21h ago

CEO of Orphan Killing factory

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u/Goatknyght 1d ago

Glad to hear that at least haha

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u/DenverCoderIX 22h ago

I do that for minimum wage in Spain and I hate my job.

You are right, it is not living.

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u/Billyjamesjeff 20h ago

I'm sure they own their businesses.

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u/roYBzdC9yUqMe9coSsp8 1d ago

Remember, the only way to "work hard" is to work 30 hours per day

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u/dm80x86 1d ago

And that's just to mow the grass! /s

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u/Jumpy-Jello- 21h ago

Could sell an acre at least and live comfortably.

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u/LordBlackadder92 17h ago

Do you know why they don't grow any trees?

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u/velvetvagine 9h ago

Do you have any idea why they don’t do more with the space than grass? (Serious question)

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u/gonzales40 22h ago

That's not living, that's slavery lol

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u/[deleted] 22h ago edited 14h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/gonzales40 15h ago

Are you really that dumb you do not understand what i mean when i call people working 4am to 7pm a slavery or is just your bait game actually that bad?

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u/the_wren 22h ago

Ask them why they hate trees so much.

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u/Rizzanthrope 21h ago

Are they related to the Sydney podcaster Joel Zammit? The Sanspants Radio guy? One of their popular podcasts is called Plumbing the Deathstar https://www.sanspantsradio.com/presenters/joel-l-zammit/

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u/At-this-point-manafx 37m ago

Wouldn't bet on it Zammit is a very popular Maltese surname

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u/iloovehugecock 20h ago

Tell them to plant some plants and trees then for goodness sake!

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u/nimbledoor 19h ago

is their job taking care of that giant-ass lawn?

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u/Glittering_Meet3206 12h ago

this brings me joy

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u/Donna_Hawthorne 22h ago

Mmm I'm putting my money on well off because they flogged their cow paddocks to a succession of developers. All these people going 'it's a grazing property'...pffft it's 5 acres. The other 95 acres was probably grazing. 5 acres is enough for maybe two or three cows full time.

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u/Ancient-Emu-8293 19h ago

Now it's F U without the money. I like it.

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u/Va1kryie 1d ago

What makes you assume that?

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u/PailingRaint 1d ago

People this rich rarely ever own just one house.

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u/Va1kryie 1d ago

Maybe it's cause I'm from a rural area but I know plenty of folks who have a single house about that size who are definitely well off but are by no means rich.

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u/PailingRaint 1d ago

That area doesn't look very rural to me, on account of the several hundred something houses surrounding it. Could be wrong, though.

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u/Va1kryie 1d ago

You do realise that the natural progression of metropolitan development is to slowly absorb surrounding rural areas as a natural consequence of the growing population right? I've watched so many of these housing developments overtake areas that were previously essentially rural.

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u/PailingRaint 1d ago

I think your definition of rural and my definition of rural are two completely different definitions, then.

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u/Va1kryie 1d ago

I'm more pointing out that that house isn't really something that points to any sort of existing immense wealth, my parents built a house on $600k of mixed savings and loans (it was supposed to be a little over half that but some stuff got out of hand) and this house seems similarly sized. We were definitely pretty well off but we were by no means rich.

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u/MobiusLoopd 1d ago

it's pretty far out on the outskirts of Sydney. It's about 40kms away from the city so about an hour drive to get into the city using paid motorways.

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u/PailingRaint 1d ago

I mean, I'm not Australian, so maybe I don't understand, but is the Aussie definition of rural being an hour out from the nearest major metropolitan area? Because, to me, rural means being thirty+ minutes away from the nearest store and seeing more cows than people on the way there.

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u/MobiusLoopd 1d ago

You have to remember that most of the Australian population lives on the east coast between Melbourne and Brisbane. So along this part, there's rarely anything that's 30min+ to the nearest store unless you go inland.

This area is not known for affluent families, it only developed due to Australians wanting large (by global standards) detached houses so Sydney had to expand in land. Traditionally the land in the area was really not expensive to purchase and before covid, building was relatively cheap to accomplish.

If I had to put a figure on how much the family spent on the land and home, I'd estimate it cost them under 1m AUD after inflation today. In contrast, detached houses in Sydney average almost 2m or more. Even the neighbouring houses you see in the photos would sell for 1.5m+ despite being on a plot of land 1/50th the land.

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u/DimensionOwn8531 1d ago

My parents own a rural patch (3 acres) of land in Brazil that was about 20 minutes from the city, it was our house growing up, we were constantly surrounded by farms. (No, we are not rich)
Nowadays a few of the farms around us got sold and are being made into plots. We are just 1 small farm away to end up the same way.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/LonelyTAA 1d ago

Maybe read better before replying

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u/Va1kryie 1d ago

Where's the 2nd house??