Real estate legend Bill Malouf offloads former Double Bay office for huge price

A series of clever deals has netted real estate legend Bill Malouf a whopping price for his now redundant blue chip office space.

354 New South Head Rd, Double Bay, has sold quietly off market.

Double Bay legend Bill Malouf’s former LJ Hooker office at 354 New South Head Rd, Double Bay, has sold for a whopping price off-market.

Sources advised the buyer, Vietnamese developer David Do, has paid $8.63m for the two-storey office.

Neither the sales agent, Max Spartalis, of Krulis Residential, or the buyer’s agent, Tas Costi of Costi Cohen, would comment on the deal.

Property records don’t indicate what Malouf paid for it. Malouf was unavailable for comment at the time of publication.

Several years ago, Malouf moved his LJ Hooker office two doors along to 350 New South Head Rd and rented out No.354 to buyers agents Trelease Associates, who have now moved.

354 New South Head Rd, Double Bay sits in between Richardson & Wrench and Ray White Double Bay.

And of course in November 2021, Malouf, with his son, David, announced they were going into partnership with Highland Property, a major player in the Sutherland Shire, and their office was rebranded to Highland Double Bay Malouf.

Highland Property managing director David Highland bought 50 per cent of the Maloufs’ business.

An LJ Hooker memo at the time had pointed out that Malouf is an “icon and titan of real estate” who was a country boy from Coonabarabran with a family history in pubs and hotels.

But he decided after “one fateful night in 1986” it was time for a career change.

Bill Malouf, David Highland and David Malouf.

The trigger for the move to real estate wasn’t specified in the memo, but Malouf told me in an interview in 2017 that it was his wife who urged him to quit pubs — by then in Sydney’s inner west — after a near-death experience in a street brawl in the mid-1980s.

The memo had continued: “Bill opened LJ Hooker Double Bay with, in his own words, zero dollars in the bank.

Do, of AWI, was in the news in recent years for wanting to build a $200m resort in Darwin.

It’s not clear what his intentions are for the Double Bay office.

Originally published as Real estate legend Bill Malouf offloads former Double Bay office for huge price