Property Confidential: Jurassic Park star Sam Neill sells in Double Bay
Jurassic Park star Sam Neill has sold the Double Bay home he has owned since 1996 in a history making sale for the Eastern Suburbs.
NSW
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ACTOR SAM SELLS UP IN DOUBLE BAY
Actor Sam Neill has sold his Double Bay home and made a little bit of history in the process. The four-bedroom Pearce St property was sold for an undisclosed price believed to be above $3.6 million through a virtual platform called Openn Negotiation, without an auctioneer – the first home in the eastern suburbs to sell this way.
Agent for Neill’s Federation bungalow, Paul Ephron of Ballard Property Double Bay, said there were six bidders registered for the Wednesday night auction with the property selling to an ex-pat living in Hong Kong who plans to eventually live in the home.
Neill, star of Jurassic Park and set to reprise the character of Dr Alan Grant in the upcoming Jurassic World: Dominion, bought the property in 1996 for $839,000 with his former wife Noriko Watanabe. He now splits his time between his New Zealand vineyard, Canberra and Sydney with his partner, ABC political correspondent Laura Tingle.
Openn Negotiation, an Australian company that was started by three West Australian businessmen in 2016 and has operated on the east coast for the past 18 months, has seen a massive increase in activity during the coronavirus lockdown.
Unlike most online auctions that operate by live streaming an actual event, Openn Negotiation displays live bids made without having to rely on the sometime-problematic glitching of live streaming.
“We saw a 700 per cent increase in agents getting in touch last month alone and we’re expecting that number to be even bigger this month,” co founder and CEO Pete Gibbons said. “People are seeing it as a better, more transparent way to transact and while Covid may be exposing us to more people, after it passes I think this will become the new normal in terms of transacting online.”
CRINITI FAMILY HOME SELLS
In the week it was announced their family name would live on in the restaurant world, the Crinitis found out the family home would not. The Auburn property of Cosimo and Rosa Criniti – known as Papa and Mama Criniti – has been sold off market for $1.08 million.
It was their son, Frank Criniti, who with his then-wife Rima, started the restaurant chain Crinitis in 2003 when they opened their first location in nearby Parramatta with a menu filled with home recipes belonging to Mama Rosa.
The four-bedroom plus study speckled brick home in Happ St has been in the family since 1984. They had tried to sell it once before, in December 2016, but it was withdrawn from sale after 25 days of marketing.
In 2018, Cosimo and Rosa celebrated their 50th anniversary, the same year the family opened yet another restaurant, this time in Wollongong.
In November last year, the family business went into voluntary administration with tax debts believed to be around $16.5 million, closing several stores, including three in NSW. A $6.1 million buyout of the business fell through recently due to restrictions on the restaurant industry from coronavirus. But on Tuesday an 11th hour buyer came through – the South Australian-based Italian restaurant chain, Brunelli Group, who have announced they will reopen a “slimmed down” version of the six remaining Crinitis stores.
The two-storey property has marble floors throughout, a large open plan kitchen, dining and living area that leads out onto a covered and paved entertaining space and a separate formal lounge room and formal dining room.