By Padraig Collins For Daily Mail Australia
15:56 15 May 2024, updated 17:38 15 May 2024
A tenant has begged Anthony Albanese to not make him homeless after the Prime Minister issued him with an eviction notice.
Jim Flanagan, 45, has lived in one of Mr Albanese’s investment properties in the inner-west Sydney suburb of Dulwich Hill for four years, but has been given 90 days to pack up and leave.
The Prime Minister’s property portfolio has previously been estimated to be worth around $5million, though he sold a two-bedroom unit in Canberra in 2022.
Mr Albanese famously grew up in public housing in Sydney, but now owns a mortgage-free bungalow in Marrickville and the three-bedroom Dulwich Hill townhouse.
The Prime Minister now splits his time between The Lodge in Canberra and Kirribilli House in Sydney, rent and mortgage-free.
Mr Flanagan was reluctant to go public about his situation but felt he had no other choice.
‘This will kill me, it’s a crippling blow right now,’ he told the Daily Telegraph.
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A shocked Mr Flanagan received the eviction notice from his real estate on May 8, which informed him that Mr Albanese ‘could be selling the house at some stage’.
‘Please be advised that the landlord requires vacant possession of the property … 90 days after the service of this letter,’ the notice stated.
He then asked for clarification on whether it the landlord’s desire he vacate the property, which the agent confirmed.
The small business owner is on a month-to-month lease and knows the Prime Minister has the right to sell the house.
But Mr Flanagan has been spurred into trying to stay on after reading about the government’s $1.9billion package to slash rental costs for vulnerable people announced in Tuesday’s Federal Budget.
‘It just doesn’t sit well when (Mr Albanese) is trying to be sympathetic with the majority of Australians who are, like me, finding the current climate extremely challenging,’ Mr Flanagan said.
He said he voted for Labor in the 2022 election and mostly supports the party’s policies, but he is doing it tough as the bar he owns is struggling.
Mr Albanese reduced the rent for Mr Flanagan and his then partner pay to $680 a week during the pandemic, and has not raised it since.
Mr Flanagan added that the Prime Minister ‘has been a great landlord’ and ‘very generous’.
But if he is evicted, his rent for a similar property in the same area, which is a short walk away from his bar, is likely to be around $800 a week.
Mr Flanagan’s former partner has previously opened up about what it was like having the PM as a landlord.
In a video on TikTok in 2022, she praised Mr Albanese for ‘living the values he preaches’ by slashing her rent by 25 per cent at the start of the Covid pandemic – and maintaining that reduced rate two years later.
Mr Albanese, who is estimated to be earning around $115,000 a year from his investment properties, said on Wednesday night that he was going to sell due to ‘changes in my personal life’.
Those changes are understood to be his impending marriage to Ms Haydon after the couple got engaged in February.
He bought the Dulwich Hill property for $1.175million in 2015, and it’s now estimated to be worth between $1.9million and $2.2million.
Mr Albanese also rents out his former home in Marrickville, which is also in Sydney’s inner-west, for $1,350 a week.
He splits his time between The Lodge in Canberra and Kirribilli House- the prime ministerial residence in Sydney.