The Sell: Jennifer Hawkins sells Newport labour of love for reputed $20m
Prestige property sales have been sparse in Sydney of late, but the financial year ended on a high note with the sale of Jennifer Hawkins’ Newport home for a reputed $20 million, writes real estate insider Jonathan Chancellor.
NSW
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The sale of the Newport waterfront home of Jennifer Hawkins and Jake Wall — at a reputed $20 million — saw out the quietest of financial years for prestige sales.
It took the glamorous couple eight months to secure the buyer of Casa Paloma.
The four-level residence, designed by Koichi Takada on its 3360sqm holding, sold just two days before June 30 — and just short of three years after they moved in.
The couple have suggested they intend to head to the Central Coast.
No price or buyer have yet been revealed by Christie’s International.
If their ambitious expectations were achieved, it would be the first $20 million-plus deal outside of Palm Beach on Sydney’s northern beaches, with Finisterre on Avalon’s Stokes Point selling for close to $20 million to the Oatley family in 2002.
Hawkins and Wall bought their adjoining blocks in March 2014 for $4 million.
Their envisaged $2 million building project was funded with a Westpac mortgage.
The couple took a second Westpac mortgage in August 2017 as they moved into the luxury home.
Then, in mid-March this year, Jamie Osborn’s Get Wealth lodged a caveat over Jake’s half share pursuant to a line of credit.
Sydney’s financial year top home sale was $40 million in Point Piper last September when Westpac director Steve Harker sold his harbourfront to entrepreneur Gabriel Jakob and his wife Alexandra on extended settlement terms, with demolition plans emerging last month for a family triplex.
There is mystery surrounding the two most recent prestige sales as both were off-market.
The highest is believed to have been $33.5 million for Berthong on Elizabeth Bay.
Then last month Alex Thorp and Shay Lewis-Thorp, sold in Bellevue Hill for a reported $30 million to neighbour Louise Christie through Pillinger Real Estate.
CATE BLANCHETT’S 3000 VIEWERS
Some 3000 online views have been undertaken of Cate Blanchett’s redundant Macquarie Street, Sydney, bolthole, which went live on real estate.com.au 10 days ago.
The split-level apartment with 400sqm space is in the Astor, Sydney’s highest residential building from 1923 until 1960.
Some $12 million is being sought through Christie’s International agent Ken Jacobs.
There’s no hiding its celebrity ownership as it is being marketed as Blanchett’s home.
There’s a side table that could only belong to a Hollywood actor. There’s an Oscar statue, which could have been for her role in either The Aviator in 2005 or Blue Jasmine in 2014.
There’s also a BAFTA award, of which she’s won three, and Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards gracing the table.
Blanchett and her husband Andrew Upton, whose Dirty Films company has signed a first-look feature film production deal with New Republic Pictures, bought their eighth-floor unit from mortgage broker Mark Bouris in 2015 for about $8 million.
It was entertainer Barry Humphries who joined the two levels and installed its Hollywood-style staircase.
DISNEY EXECUTIVE’S MANSION FETCHES $6M
The Bellevue Hill mansion of the former Walt Disney executive Gunnar Mansson has been sold for $6.22 million.
The Victoria Rd home was listed following the death of his widow Yvette Merel, through Raine & Horne agent Peter Starr.
Born in 1927, Mansson was Disney’s merchandising manager. He oversaw publication of a 32-page Donald Duck magazine in the 1960s that had one million readers per week.
After more than 25 years at Disney, Mansson retired in 1989, then buying the Bellevue Hill house for $1.1 million from Louis Vuitton boss Kyojiro Hata.
“When we married, Gunnar was a 64-year-old bachelor,” Yvette once advised. He died in 2007.
$60M RICHMOND NORTH FARM SALE
Hambledon Park, the North Richmond farm, has been sold for $60 million.
The 253ha property, 70km north of Sydney, has been bought by Fairway Thoroughbreds businessman John Camilleri, the breeder of Winx.
His acquisition wasn’t equine driven, nor for Camilleri’s Baiada Poultry enterprise, which controls the Steggles and Lilydale brands.
Instead it is a long-term residential subdivision opportunity. There is approval for a small rural subdivision of 25 lots, which dates back to 2008.
But the demand for smaller housing lots in the Hawkesbury municipality has rocketed over the subsequent dozen years.
“Hambledon Park will one day be a new suburb of Sydney,” Cushman & Wakefield selling agent Anthony Bray said.
Any eventual residential development market will follow the nearby successful housing estates including The Ponds, Elara, and The Hills Carmel.
The Camilleri family’s Celestino Developments recently sold Stockland, the unbuilt two-thirds of its 293ha masterplanned site, The Gables at Box Hill, with the listed developer paying $415 million over seven years.
Bray had expected to see stronger interest from developers, and the tertiary education and agricultural industries for Hambledon Park, but the absence of Chinese buyers from the buying mix meant it sold for less than its $120 million expectations of two years ago.
The property was a 1200-cow dairy farm at its peak after being purchased in 1974 by the Peel family who were a major dairy supplier into Sydney.
More recently it has been a feed lot, along with operating a breeding herd of about 300 black angus cows.
CHERIE BARBER TRIMS PORTFOLIO
Renovation queen Cherie Barber has sold another investment property.
She secured $550,000 for the four bedroom, one-bathroom Lethbridge Park cottage which cost $360,000 in 2014.
Barber, the founder of Renovating for Profit, sold a Colyton investment earlier this year.
It was bought in 2016 for $580,000, and was flipped for $870,000 after a granny flat was built.
Barber is the mystery $6 million delayed settlement buyer of comedian Merrick Watts’ Lilyfield warehouse.\
The 1920s Oh Boy Candy Company space was converted by architect Virginia Kerridge into a family home for Watts, his wife Georgie and their two children.
Watts, who formed part of the comedy duo Merrick and Rosso, paid $2.1 million in 2008 for the two-storey showroom with sawtooth roofing.