EXCLUSIVE
Brittany Higgins‘ taxpayer-bankrolled French chateau is expected to be sold at a massive loss with it still on the market six months after it first went up for sale, even after she slashed the price last year.
Now her French real estate agent is refusing to comment on speculation the price will be cut even further in the coming weeks in a desperate bid to whip up some interest.
Higgins, who is expecting to give birth to her first baby – a son – this month, bought the property with her now-husband, David Sharaz, at the peak of a French property boom in 2023.
Now languishing on the books of the Bergerac branch of the local Eleonor estate agency, the three-bedroom mansion in Lunas, a tiny village 100km east of Bordeaux in south-west France, has had ‘a couple of offers’, the agent told Daily Mail Australia.
The property is a converted old ironmonger’s house called La Forge with a pool in a quiet rural street in the picturesque Dordogne region.
After entering the sale market last September, the 5000sqm estate had its price slashed in December from around €420,000 ($682,000) to around €367,500 ($596,500).
The average time it takes to sell a house in France is three months. The real estate agent refused to discuss the possibility of another imminent price cut and admitted: ‘I can’t tell you that.’
Brittany Higgins’ taxpayer-funded French chateau could be headed for a massive loss as it remains unsold after six months and faces a possible further price slash
As Brittany Higgins (pictured at the house in France last year) bunkers down ahead of the birth of her first child, the mansion bought in 2023 looks like losing the couple up to $100,000
Christmas dinner 2023 for David Sharaz and Brittany Higgins in the Australian taxpayer-funded mansion in the French countryside which they are now forced to sell at a loss
She described the local real estate market as ‘okay’, although national assessments of France’s property sector describe it as in ‘fragile recovery’ – with the French real estate market in 2024 considered ‘nothing short of a rollercoaster’.
Reports vary on what Higgins and Sharaz paid for the house – estimated to be between $600,000 and $700,000 – but the final selling price could now slip as low as $100,000 below their original outlay.
And with notaries’ fees, which must be paid to oversee each step of the sale under France’s intricate property laws – the couple could be substantially out of pocket.
That’s set to limit their options as they look to buy a new home in Melbourne where they are thought to have currently bunkered down ahead of their child’s impending birth.
A year before moving to France, Ms Higgins was awarded more than $2.4million from taxpayer funds for her loss of earning capacity, legal costs, medical expenses, domestic assistance and $400,000 ‘for hurt, distress and humiliation’.
The payout by the Albanese government was for her treatment in Canberra after her alleged rape by former colleague Bruce Lehrmann in Parliament House in 2019.
Although Federal Court Justice Michael Lee found in a defamation trial instigated by Lerhmann that on the balance of probabilities he had raped Higgins, Lehrmann has not been criminally convicted of the alleged crime.
Lehrmann’s criminal prosecution in the ACT Supreme Court ended in a mistrial after a juror misconduct in 2022, and the charges were later dropped against Lehrmann with any further retrial abandoned.
Brittany Higgins and David Sharaz look upbeat as they arrive in 2023 to take possession of their new chateau, which was bought at the tail end of the French property boom which crashed last year and is in a fragile recovery now
Currently on the market for €367 500 or about $596,500, Higgin’s taxpayer-funded house could drop its sale price to $580,000 or less as back in Australia she prepares to give birth
After spending Christmas 2023 at the home in tiny Lunas, which has no cafes or reastaurants – just a bakery, pizza joint and a coin machine for baguettes (above), Higgins and Sharaz married last June and then put the house up for sale last September
After spending Christmas 2023 at the home in tiny Lunas, which has no cafes or reastaurants – just a bakery, pizza joint and coin machine for baguettes, Higgins and Sharaz married last June at Currumbin Valley Estate in the Gold Coast hinterland.
In July, they announced that they were expecting a baby, and in August they attended court hearings in Perth for the defamation proceedings taken out against them by former Liberal senator Linda Reynolds.
In October, Higgins revealed on her Instagram page that her unborn baby boy has been given the all-clear after blood tests suggested he might have a genetic disorder.
She had undergone amniocentesis tests, which scan for genetic abnormalities and birth defects such as cystic fibrosis, Down syndrome, and fragile X syndrome, halfway through the second trimester of her pregnancy.
The timing of Higgins’ statement would suggest the child is likely to be born this month.
Asked when she thought Higgins and Sharaz might offload their property in France, the Eleonor agent said: ‘You never know in this business. We do have interest.’
Higgins and Sharaz were forced to come back from their French bolt-hole last August to attend the defamation trial of former Liberal senator Linda Reynolds
The town of Lunas in the Dordogne is only 100km from cosmopolitan Bordeaux, but has no buzzing social scene and now Higgins and Sharaz are trying to sell up their mansions
The couple married in June last year and announced they were expecting a baby boy which is believed to be due in late February
Daily Mail Australia’s The Group Chat exclusively revealed last month that the couple are likely to set up a new home in Melbourne with their new baby.
They are hoping to buy in the well-heeled, family-friendly suburb of Malvern East.
Higgins has set her sights on Malvern East because her best friend, lobbyist Emma Webster, who supported Higgins daily during the defamation trial, lives there.
Malvern East has a median house price of about $2million and median unit price of is just slightly more than $600,000.
If Higgins and Sharaz sell La Forge for its current asking price, or less, after a price drop plus notary fees for handling the sale, they will scrape in under the middle of the Malvern East flat market for a flat.
Notwithstanding Higgins potentially having saved the bulk of the remainder of her $2.4m payout, Sharaz may have to get a job for their life with a new baby in the suburbs.
