The Sell: Kylie and Tony Gillies offload Camperdown investment unit
TV host Kylie Gillies and her husband have sold their recently renovated Camperdown apartment for a great price after buying it for $510k in 2002.
NSW
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The Morning Show’s Kylie Gillies, and her husband, former AAP editor-in-chief Tony Gillies, put their Camperdown apartment investment up for auction on Saturday.
It sold for $1,265,000 after 19 bids came from five of the 10 bidders after the $990,000 opening bid. The Seven Network veteran has owned the recently renovated apartment since paying $510,000 in 2002.
“The hard work has been done for you,” Cooley auctioneer Briannan Davis said.
Chris Vallas of Allan Dale Real Estate has the conjunctional listing with a $1.05 million guide.
Described as Manhattan-style living, the top floor apartment has two bedrooms and two bathrooms across its two levels, with 150sqm on title including the parking space and extensive terracing.
There are views across to the Anzac Bridge and city skyline. And it has a new stone and gas kitchen with a breakfast bench and integrated Kleenmaid fridge.
The last sale in the building of just eight came in February when a 91sqm two-bedroom, one bathroom apartment sold for $930,000. The neighbouring 162sqm apartment sold for $1 million in 2017.
It was 1997 when Gillies joined the network, as an assistant producer on Seven’s Late News. She went on to become the sports news presenter at Sportsworld, before heading to The Morning Show.
The Gillies’, who wed in 1989, have owned a Putney waterfront since 2005, paying $1,699,000 for the home on nearly 700sqm before demolishing and building their own home in 2011.
Meanwhile, Gillies’ Morning Show co-host, Larry Emdur, has been busy trading homes. Emdur recently sold his home at The Rocks through estate agent son Jye Emdur who had a $4 million guide.
He’s off to Darling Point with wife, Sylvie having paid $3.09 million in 2017 for The Rocks warehouse apartment.
A rare Murcutt masterpiece sold
The rare opportunity to secure a Glenn Murcutt architectural gem in metropolitan Sydney saw Murcutt-devotees secure the Woollahra offering, Littlemore House.
The 1986 contemporary pavilion-style house with garden courtyard – and long facade facing north onto a small park – was auctioned by James Keenan at Ray White Double Bay who’d offered a $5.1 million price guide.
It fetched higher, but at an undisclosed price at Saturday’s private auction. It has been the tightly-held home of the former journalist turned prominent barrister Stuart Littlemore QC and his wife, Alison, a potter, who are looking to downsize.
The Littlemores had commissioned Murcutt in 1983 after buying the Kilminster Lane building block for $57,000 in 1976.
Of course the best known of Murcutt’s tightly held houses have been located by the beach and in bushland, but this one was on a former Pitt Bros furniture factory site on a small lane.
Woollahra Council deemed the boundary glazed wall contravened the conventional standards for setbacks so the building approval came from the NSW Land & Environment Court.
It’s a two-storey house with lofts and basement garage under corrugated roofing.
“It is trying to work within that community but not replication, and it is not a case of planning not to replicate because I want to be different, it is trying to understand today, because what I do today is history tomorrow,” Murcutt once advised.
The use of hi-tech windows, steel, corrugated metal and climate-modifying devices such as mechanised sun control/privacy louvres are features for which Murcutt is highly regarded. “The building is an outstanding example of a late Twentieth Century Modern style building,” Woollahra Council now notes, adding it reflects an evolution of the architect’s pavilion planning.
Littlemore, whose architect father David took on completing the Opera House after Joern Utzon left, has long acknowledged that he and his family were happy with the house.
“We just love the house; there’s nothing we’d change,’’ he once said.
Howard Tanner reviewed the house for a 2004 RAIA essay noting that it has an expansive feel due to its open-sidedness, and the skylights and light scoops that bring in sunlight. He noted that the strong burnt reds and cobalt blues, which initially made the house stand out, have now weathered into the general scene.
“New design approaches and, in particular, the use of steel and glass have freed housing of the inhibitions implicit in the masonry box that dominated 19th and 20th century urban construction,” Tanner suggested, noting Murcutt’s design had highlighted the issues facing the pursuit of thoughtful new residential designs within the conservative framework of established suburbs.
He argued that all too often within local government inexperienced people are asked to judge applications, and for them it is easiest to use a rule-book approach.
“By such means they often prevent the best, but can’t stop the worst from occurring,” he said.
Pool plan upsets neighbours
There’s a new luxury pool planned for the Darling Point Mediterranean-style property of emergency finance provider Tim Odillo Maher and his fashionista wife, Victoria Montano, but the neighbours are not happy.
All up the plans have been costed at $747,000 with colonnaded arches in an all white feel designed by Western Australia landscaper Paul Alexander.
The most affected neighbour appears to be Tamsin Johnson, the interior designer, and Patrick Johnson, of bespoke tailor P Johnson tailors, who bought the adjoining historic 1920s trophy home, Kendall Lodge for $10.05 million in late 2020.
It seems the fencing is the biggest issue, after the proposed lift was taken out of the initial plans.
The Odillo couple bought their home for $10.3 million in 2016 from Charlie and Ellie Aitken. At the time, Aitken, the fund manager, advised he was backing himself against the up-market Sydney property market as part of the sale proceeds were put into his then $75 million fund, Aitken Investment Management, rather than back into bricks and mortar.
The Aitkens had bought it in 2008, and then had Thomas Hamel undertake $600,000 in renovations and engaged Paul Bangay to do the gardens. The Aitkens had bought it for $6.95 million so they took a profit, although Darling Point’s average has jumped close to 50 per cent in the meantime, based on the average jumping from $7.8 million to $11.5 million over the period.
Yurulbin fetches $13.68m
Yurulbin, the charming 1899 Birchgrove harbourfront listed for recent auction with $12 million hopes, fetched $13.68 million, according to the settlement details.
The Louisa Road was sold ahead of its scheduled March auction through McGrath Balmain’s Megan Smith by the Penfold family who had lived there since 1986.
Stephen Penfold, a third generation Penfold of the stationers, WC Penfold & Co, and his late wife, Barbara, who co-founded Kwik Copy, had paid $490,000 in 1986 when they moved from Pymble to the property which was not in great shape. The four-bedroom residence on 727sqm on what was once known as Long Nose Point has been renovated while retaining its original ornate Federation/Queen Anne finishes.
The Aboriginal name, Yurulbin, is said to mean swift-running water. The harbourfront home is where the Comanchero bikies gang set up their first city clubhouse in 1983 and where disaffected members broke away to form the Bandidos.
Yurulbin had been bought by adman Lionel Hunt for $420,000 in 1981 and then rented out unknowingly in 1983 to the bikies — a tenant calling himself Mr SJ Curtis, who was really Comanchero Stephen ‘Opey’ Cowan.
The home has been bought by anaesthetist Dr Thomas Theodorou and Dalai Clarke, who sold their Wahroonga house late last year for $8,368,000. Kintore House, built in 1928 on its 2289sqm holding, was once owned by the Arnotts biscuit family.
Tamarama buy for Fonseca
The investment company of Adrian Fonseca, managing director of Oxanda Education, has emerged as the $11.05 million buyer of the Tamarama home of fashion designer Wayne Cooper and his wife Sarah Marsh. The Carlisle St home, sitting high above Tamarama Park, last traded for $5.5 million in 2011.
For reasons only known to himself, Fonseca appears in the latest Prime Amazon series of Luxe Listings Sydney as a prestige buyer. All quite bizarre as the Bellevue Hill purchase was in early 2018, while the current series features the 2021 boom.
His cameo left savvy property followers flummoxed given the $14.35 million purchase was out of sync with current day pricing. Before founding Oxanda, Fonseca spent 17 years in investment banking in Sydney, Singapore and London with Macquarie Bank, Deutsche Bank and Barclays. His wife, Nancy Reardon-Fonseca and family member Mitchell Reardon emerged this week as the $14.258 million buyers of the Duffys Forest equestrian estate Claremont, bought from Chinese herbalist Dr Shuquan Liu and Dajing Li.
Bowral sale for Wallabies coach
Former Wallabies coach Bob Dwyer and wife Ruth Maddigan have sold their Bowral house for $5.7 million.
The four bedroom, four bathroom Kangaloon Rd house that overlooks the golf course came with 18m-long open plan dining and living space with double-glazed windows. It comes with rich American oak floors, plus a climate-controlled 600-bottle wine room.
Its north-facing terrace opens from the formal dining room to the Harriette Conway designed garden.
They bought the 2200sqm holding in 2013 for $550,000 when it had taken 518 days to sell, compared to just the seven days in its latest sale. Dwyer and Maddigan sold their first retreat in the Southern Highlands, 40ha at Robertson for $4.7 million in 2015.
Two Gates Farm had the pavilion style home designed by Richard Rowe in gardens designed by Annie Wilkes.
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