IMF's Christine Lagarde says Sydney property is "very expensive"

Christine Lagarde flirted with the idea of buying a holiday bolthole in Sydney on her last trip to Australia

But the Washington-based managing director of the International Monetary Fund was in for a shock.

“It’s very expensive,” she said in an interview to the Australian Financial Review's John Kehoe on the eve of her arrival for the G20 summit in Brisbane.

Lagarde is paid a tax-free salary of US$467,940 (A$537,572). Sadly she wasn't pressed on just where she looked. Perhaps opposite the Opera House given her younger brother, Olivier Lalouette, is a well regarded baritone singer in Europe. 

She was been to Australia three times this year, in Sydney in early 2014 for a G-20 Meeting of Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors.

She was in Cairns too, swimming at Ellis Beach.

The former antitrust and labour lawyer, and former Finance Minister of France during Nicolas Sarkozy’s term as President, and represented the working class 12th Arrondissement voters in Paris. She was raised in the 9th Arrondissement.

She was ranked the fifth most powerful woman in the world by Forbes magazine earlier this year.

Her partner Xavier Giocanti heads Resilance, a Marseille based property investment company, and they are known to occasionally holiday at Corsica.