Home is the place where each of us grew up, a nest where we felt and feel safe, and where we keep all the memories of our childhood. It is a comfortable place for most of us, but also a place we would never want to leave. Sadly, times are changing, children are growing up, and even the neighbors whose faces were once so familiar to us are moving away. In large cities, structural changes are much more abrupt, so it is easy to find yourself surrounded by new homes and buildings that once made way for the countryside. In an ever-changing world, the Zammit family is a fixed point: their house and driveway have remained the same, while everything around them has changed dramatically over time.
For years the Zammit family, who live in the suburb of The Ponds near Quakers Hill in western Sydney, Australia, have been receiving six-figure offers to sell their home, and for years the response is the same: no. In this neighborhood, which has become gray and invaded by buildings that all look alike and have no identity, the Zammit house stands out so much that some consider it the “castle” of the suburbs. Imagine a large red brick villa, from which a 200-meter driveway starts, bordered by a beautiful green lawn. The building boom doesn’t seem to have affected this Australian family’s home, though it has changed the look of entire neighborhoods over the years.
Do you know what has been the highest bid for the house, as we know it, so far? A good five million dollars. A huge sum that would tempt anyone, and which was offered to the Zammit 10 years ago. But they don’t seem ready to give in.
Their home would have reached a total value of $50 million today, but even that number makes no difference to them. The sentimental value that binds them to this house, which has become the last example in this suburb of a more traditional and harmonious architecture, is much more important than money. In short, all the money in the world would not be enough to buy this house.
The Zammits’ house is the only green space in The Ponds and the last red-brick house in a neighborhood saturated with gray concrete blocks and dead-end alleys.
