You’ve read the book, now buy the house (where it was written): Anna Funder lists home

There is no shortage of architect-redesigned Victorian terraces in Sydney’s inner city, but few lay claim to having produced a Miles Franklin Award-winning piece of literature in the study above the garage.

Fewer still could claim to have been designed by the same brain that has for years been trying to fix the urban design of Sydney.

Both of which make the Forest Lodge home of acclaimed author Anna Funder and her husband, architect and urban designer Craig Allchin, all the more unique as it hits the market this weekend.

The Forest Lodge house was renovated over a three-year period and completed to a design by Craig Allchin in 2018.

The couple has owned the three-storey house since early 2004, paying $1.14 million a few years after the launch of Funder’s novel Stasiland, and the self-contained studio at the rear was where she wrote her award-winning book All That I Am, as well as her soon-to-be-released book Wifedom: The Invisible Life of Orwell’s First Wife.

A renovation from 2015 until 2018 extended the family home into what is now a six-bedroom, three-bathroom home, although two of those bedrooms are the couple’s respective studies.

But given the ever-growing space demands of three kids and the couple’s desire to “mix it up”, they turned a long-time hobby of house hunting into an actual house purchase last month when they successfully bid $6.225 million at auction for a Victorian Italianate villa in Glebe.

The three-storey house goes to auction on April 2 with a $3.5 million guide.

The idea being, said Allchin, to have a house with enough space for multi-generational living, so the kids have separate spaces to themselves as they get older.

BresicWhitney’s Chris Nunn has set a guide of $3.5 million and an April 2 auction.

Pokies heir strikes it lucky

A block of six apartments on the harbour at Manly has seen a slew of top sales in quick succession totalling more than $34 million, of which one of the biggest beneficiaries is Paul Ainsworth, son of billionaire pokie baron Len Ainsworth.

The apartment sold by Paul Ainsworth was just the latest of four in the block sold in quick succession.

Ainsworth scored more than $9 million for his two-level spread in the Oyama Avenue block, despite it being in need of a bit of a renovation and last trading for $2.05 million when his investment company, Writeman, purchased it in 2001.

It is the latest sale making the most of pent-up buyer demand that was first tapped last September when Clarke & Humel’s Helene Taylor and Michael Clarke sold a three-bedder for $8.6 million to Elizabeth Copeland, a former investor in business technology start-up Avoka Technologies.

Transport Asset Holding Entity chairman Bruce Gordon is downsizing from Cammeray.Credit: Fairfax Media

A month later another apartment sold for $6.875 million to Julie Morgan, wife of Transport Asset Holding Entity chairman Bruce Morgan, both of whom are downsizing from their recently sold $11.5 million Cammeray home.

Still with buyers circling in January, the Clarke & Humel team then sold the largest apartment in the block for $9.6 million on behalf of insurance industry veteran Damien Sullivan and his wife Kathryn, which no doubt paved the way for Ainsworth’s bullish sale last week.

Ainsworth still owns property locally, but corporate records show he is now a local in Gladesville, where he bought an ultra-contemporary home for about $4.3 million in 2019. His former high-end Manly home is the Mediterranean-style villa on Fairy Bower he sold in 2004 and which is now owned by former Channel Seven chief Tim Worner.

Top hopes for Top of the Town

Investment banker Michael Rothner was just days away from settling on his $7.3 million purchase of the sub-penthouse in Darlinghurst’s landmark Top of the Town building recently when he listed it with a guide of $10 million to $11 million.

The four-bedroom sub-penthouse has been listed with $10 million to $11 million hopes.

How did the price jump so quickly? It was a long settlement. The head of AsheMorgan and leading figure in Sydney’s Jewish community has already been living in the four-bedroom spread for almost two years, having exchanged to buy it back in 2020.

At the time the building record was $10.9 million set when property developer Duncan Hardie and his wife Lyn bought the penthouse in 2016, but dropped to $10.5 million a year ago when the Hardies sold it for $10.5 million to Kerry Paramor, wife of property veteran Greg Paramor.

The protracted settlement and quick resale is reminiscent of billionaire Brett Blundy’s Rose Bay mansion, which he agreed to buy in 2013 for a then jaw-dropping $33 million, only to settle on it in 2016 and within weeks list it for $45 million.

Rothner is no stranger to a trophy deal of his own. He and his former wife Lisa sold their Darling Point residence in 2014 for $23.2 million to freight boss Terry Tzaneros, who then sold it four years later for $31.8 million to Winky Chow, the daughter of Chinese-Australian billionaire Chau Chak Wing.

Michael Rothner exchanged on the sub-penthouse in the Top of the Town building in 2020.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

Rothner has listed it with Richardson & Wrench’s Jason Boon and 1st City’s Julian Hasemer.

Woollahra’s fast-moving market

Venture capitalist David Klinger is no doubt relieved he never managed to sell his Woollahra home when he listed it in 2019 with $9 million hopes.

That’s because he’s now selling it with a $14.5 million guide through Richardson & Wrench Double Bay’s Michael Dunn.

The Rosemont Avenue residence was first listed by David Klinger in 2019.

In his favour, the ceiling has been raised considerably on the suburb’s highest sales in the years since thanks to Mike Cannon-Brookes’s $18.5 million purchase of Germany’s former consul-general official residence, Kerri-Anne Kennerley’s $22 million house sale of a year ago, and the $45 million sale of Rosemont estate by Lady Margot Burrell a few weeks later.

Venture capitalist David Klinger is selling in Woollahra.Credit: LinkedIn

Klinger’s Federation residence boasts a who’s who of previous owners, such as developer Andrew Richardson, who sold in 1999 for $2.82 million to recruitment boss Phil Kerry and his wife, former Olympian Anne-Maree Kerry, who in turn sold to lawyer Chris Murphy a year later for $3.35 million.

Klinger, a former executive at Macquarie Bank, purchased it in 2007 for $5.695 million from investment manager Craig Goodman, and recently scored DA approval for a third-level addition with a lift and three-car garage.

Rob Deutsch’s home upgrade

F45 co-founder Rob Deutsch has set an April 2 auction on his Bronte home, given plans to upgrade to more family-friendly digs near the harbour.

F45 gym founder Rob Deutsch is selling his Bronte house for $17.5 million.Credit:

A trio of agents – Pillinger’s Brad Pillinger, PPD’s Alexander Phillips and Ray White Double Bay’s Ashley Bierman – have been appointed to sell the three-level residence with a guide of $17.5 million.

F45 co-founder Rob Deutsch is planning a home upgrade.Credit: Peter Braig

Deutch’s home upgrade comes less than two years after he stepped down as chief of the fitness giant, and since expanded his property portfolio to include the Patchway estate in Burradoo for $4.8 million, and a $2 million house on Mermaid Beach on the Gold Coast.

Deutsch purchased the Bronte house in 2018 for $11.2 million, renovated it a year later, and listed it briefly in 2020 before a slew of local sales set successive suburb records, most recently at $25 million for the house long owned by the late Seven chief Maureen Kerridge.

Hunters Hill’s latest high hopes

Chinese billionaire Sam Guo may have set the Hunters Hill house price record when he sold Windermere for $19 million late last year, but the peninsula’s all-time high has been held by the Woolwich residence Vailele since 2017 when Chinese-born Wang Xiande purchased it for $22.18 million from Christine Salter, widow of Salmat co-founder Phil Salter.

But that might change. Well-known punter Lincoln Holgate has listed his three-storey waterfront residence for $23 million to $25 million.

The Mayfield Avenue waterfront residence has views to Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Knight Frank’s William Laing, who has listed it with Ward Partner’s Matthew Ward, said the Mayfield Avenue address makes it a rarity in the area given it claims both Harbour Bridge views and a waterfront position.

It was previously owned by former Sydney lord mayor Nelson Meers and his wife Carole until they sold it to Holgate in 2009 for $8.5 million.

The Holgates rebuilt it three years ago into a far more contemporary five-bedroom home with a jetty, pontoon and a boat shed.