Anthony Albanese’s tenant has yet to find a place to live as eviction day approaches from the Prime Minister’s posh $2.2 million Sydney townhouse.
Jim Flanagan has been tipped off to a rather posh place in the trendy inner-city suburb of Dulwich Hill.
But he admitted to Daily Mail Australia on Friday: “It’s very difficult to find anything.”
After a busy week in the spotlight and receiving criticism after he begged the Prime Minister to let him stay, Flanagan says he is backing out of giving any more interviews.
Outside the Prime Minister’s investment property, which he now wants to sell, Flanagan insisted he had no intention of attacking his landlord.
Instead, he said he was just trying to focus attention on the rental crisis facing potential tenants in Australia right now.
“I don’t have any problem with Albo,” he said. ‘I just wanted to talk about the issue of rental housing and the cost of living.
“I just wanted to make that point,” he said as he walked toward the door of the prime minister’s squat two-story home.
He again lamented the lack of affordable rentals before firmly closing the property’s elegant glass door.
Daily Mail Australia can reveal Flanagan has been renting the gleaming home with stylish finishes and all the modern amenities for a bargain basement price of $680 a week.
Jim Flanagan, (above) outside the house he rents from the Prime Minister on Friday, says he doesn’t want to talk about it anymore, but said he “didn’t have any problem with Albo.”
Inside Mr Flanagan’s budget rental in Albo is a stylish modern kitchen, three bedrooms and two bathrooms for the incredible price of $680 a week in Sydney’s trendy inner west.
Mr Flanagan (who was locked out of Albo’s house on Friday) has had no luck finding a rental to replace the Prime Minister’s very affordable $680-a-week, three-bedroom, two-bathroom house in the inner west.
Flanagan, 45, has lived in one of Albanese’s investment properties in the inner Sydney suburb of Dulwich Hill for four years on a Covid-reduced rent that the Prime Minister has not increased since the end of the pandemic.
The owner of the bar and record store rented the three-bedroom, two-bathroom home, which features a sparkling modern kitchen and was built in 2014, for a reduced price compared to other similar properties nearby that cost a few hundred dollars per week more.
But when Albo decided to sell the house before his upcoming wedding to his partner Jodie Haydon, Flanagan claimed it was a “crippling blow” and appeared on national television, lashing out at the “power imbalance” between landlords and tenants.
But the Australians turned on Flanagan after it was revealed that Albanese had given his tenant plenty of notice and refused to increase the rent.
It later emerged that the reason the rent was so low was that Mr Flanagan was living there under a signed lease with his ex-partner Chrissy Flanagan, who was “semi-friends” of the Prime Minister.
Flanagan was branded “entitled” by online critics who told him to “get a grip on reality.”
On Friday he was in a hurry to get back into the house, but he answered one last question before firmly closing the door on any further debate.
Asked about renting his Lazy Thinking bar, which is a two-minute walk from the Albanian house, Flanagan said: “That’s another thing… very difficult too.”
Flanagan opened the bar as a venue for independent music artists six months ago, following the closure on December 22 of The Sausage Factory restaurant he ran with his ex-partner at the same address.
The only reason Jim Flanagan is getting the bargain base rate on Albo’s posh $2.2 million home is because his ex is friends with the Prime Minister (above Chrissy Flanagan with Mr. Albanese).
The couple, who were not married but happen to share a surname, opened the restaurant in 2017 inside a former butcher shop on Dulwich Hill’s main street.
Since they split, Flanagan runs a social club offering sausage-making, sewing and choral singing classes called Chaotic Social in Petersham.
At Lazy Thinking, Flanagan runs “a music venue and record shop offering really great food and great drinks”, although he has scaled back the entire menu and serves lamb rolls on Sundays.
“We will always make anchovy toast,” he wrote.
In an Instagram post just before making headlines as the Prime Minister’s disgruntled tenant, Jim Flanagan celebrated “the most exciting and rewarding six months of all my days” of Lazy Thinking as a live music venue.
‘It’s a lot of work, so people telling me they really love it doesn’t get old. “I feel like we’ve possibly built some magic here,” he said in the post.
Since issuing Mr Flanagan a 90-day eviction notice, Mr Albanese has revealed that she wanted to sell the investment property due to changes in her personal life, specifically her impending wedding to her partner Jodie Haydon.
Flanagan, who is on a month-to-month lease, received the eviction notice from his real estate agent on May 8.
“I certainly didn’t even have a chance to discuss raising the rent, staying a little longer, potentially if the house came on the market,” he said in a television interview this week.
Jim Flanagan does not want to get involved further in the issue of Albo’s house, but the prime minister said the bar owner had refused to speak to the property agent.
Inside Albo’s home, built in 2014, there are sleek, gleaming finishes, hardwood floors, and three bedrooms plus two bathrooms.
The interior of Jim Flanagan’s ‘Lazy Thinking’ bar, a two-minute walk from Albo’s house, where he hosts live music and serves lamb rolls on Sundays.
However, Albanese later revealed that Flanagan had “refused to hold discussions with the estate agent” about the issue.
Chrissy Flanagan revealed in a recent Tik Tok video that her relationship with the Prime Minister was warm and that the Dulwich Hill home’s low rent was protected by her nominal retention of the lease.
“Obviously I haven’t spoken to him since he became Prime Minister because he’s been so busy, but you know, if I saw him on the street, he would 100 per cent know me and kiss me,” she said. saying.
‘My name is still on the lease because I don’t want his and my ex’s rent to go up, so I’m being overly generous because Albo gave us discounted rent at the beginning of the pandemic because we were small business owners.’
Online, one commenter commented that Mr Flanagan had enjoyed “about four years of renting in the submarket”. It’s a good bite, no matter who owns it.