The Sell: Landmark gig as Monika Tu joins Luxe Listings

Reality series Luxe Listings has added glamorous estate agent Monika Tu to its line-up; and Jonathan Chancellor reports on the Sydney property market’s real-life drama.

Guizhou-born Chinese estate agent Monika Tu has joined the cast of Luxe Listings Sydney in an ­attempt to improve the cultural diversity of the now-confirmed second Amazon Prime docu-reality series.

Invites have gone out for a glamorous penthouse cocktail party. The Sell hasn’t been ­invited, but assumes it will be a work-like filmed function that promotes her luxury listing of one of the seven penthouses atop the soon-to-be-completed St Leonards complex, The Landmark.

Monika Tu, the founder and director of Black Diamondz Property Concierge, is joining series two of Luxe Listings. Picture: Hollie Adams

Set on the 57th floor at 500 Pacific Highway, Tu’s listing has 335sqm internal space, and 430sqm all up.

The buyer of the two-level space will get a “penthouse without peer in the most beautiful Harbour City in the world”. The advertising says the penthouse is “in a stratosphere above all others”, and “there’s even a “stunning three-car garage”.

Two penthouses have ­already been sold, without fanfare, through Colliers International for between $14 million and $18 million in the curved project being ­developed by New Hope.

Penthouses in The Landmark, at St Leonards, have stunning views.

Two of The Landmark’s seven penthouses have already sold.

Tu, who turns 59 in August, will be right at home on the ­series. She, too, claims to be “highly regarded as Sydney’s number one real estate agent for luxury properties”.

It was in 2009 that she founded Black Diamondz Property, after making the move from Denistone East via Gordon to the Bellevue Hill home which she and partner Jad Khattar bought in 2011 at $3.25 million.

Tu has long sought stardom, even courting favourable media coverage by paying for a property journalist to fly with her to a ­Chinese property expo.

DRAMAS APLENTY AT REAL-LIFE LISTING

No one stopped buying and selling — for real — in Sydney’s eastern suburbs despite the distraction of the Luxe Listings series premiere last weekend.

And it all came with bona fide drama.

It kicked off with the former matrimonial Bondi home of TV compere Andrew O’Keefe being listed with $4.5 million hopes by his ex-wife, Eleanor Campbell. Listing agent Ric Serrao took down his Instagram video posting after word leaked.

TV host Andrew O’Keefe’s former marital home was listed for sale.

In Rose Bay, former Vogue journalist Lucy Clark listed her four-bedroom 1920s Cali­fornian bungalow for August 14 auction.

Complete with rear poolside studio, it’s long makeover has been featured through her social media postings since being bought in 2011 from EY’s Reid Zulpo for $2.7 million.

Clark and husband Marcus are heading back to Canberra for a “smallish town lifestyle”.

Its been marketed as Hamptons style with a splash of Parisian glamour by estate agent Alex Phillips, who was nowhere to be seen on Luxe Listings despite being a conjunctional agent on one of the show’s genuine offerings.

Former Vogue journalist Lucy Clark …

… has listed her Rose Bay home.

At South Coogee, Fred Schebesta, the co-founder of the comparison website, Finder, was watching the sunrise from his clifftop acquisition following settlement this week.

He’d just paid $16.85 million to former Macquarie Bank executive director Laurie Macri.

The home features in the latest hit Foxtel series, Mr Inbetween, and was the backdrop to a 1999 Herb Ritts photo shoot of Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise for the Eyes Wide Shut film.

The Vaucluse home of The Real Housewives of Sydney’s Nicole O’Neil and her husband Adam has been listed with $16 million hopes.

Elsewhere in Vaucluse, Roxy ­Jacenko’s mum, Doreen Davis-Jac­enko has advanced plans for her knockdown site. William Smart will be her new home’s architect, Blainey North is doing the interiors and Paul Bangay will landscape the gardens.

Finder co-founder Fred Schebesta paid $16.85 million for a trophy clifftop home at South Coogee.

Its been reported Doreen and her ex-husband Nick have recently pocketed some $78 million from selling their industrial property portfolio.

But it will emerge Doreen bought back the most significant, 52 Queen St, Beaconsfield for $18.5 million, the place where Roxy started her business, Sweaty Betty PR. Apparently the re-acquisition will surprise Nick.

In Woollahra, Skye and David Leckie have put out their hard rubbish ahead of their move following their reputed $17 million sale. They seem set to take a $2000-a-week apartment in Overthorpe, Double Bay.

MURRAYS FOR MOLLYMOOK

John Murray, the veteran stock picker, and wife Catherine have swapped their weekend tree change for a sea change, spending $2.5 million at Mollymook on the south coast.

The beachfront reserve property is on Narrawallee Beach and has three bedrooms. It sold recently through Raine & Horne agent Ben Pryde to the Woollahra-based family, having previously sold at $1.58 million in 2017.

John Murray, head of Perennial Value Management, at the company offices in Sydney.

The Murrays’ new Mollymook weekender.

Murray established Perennial Value in 2000 and was ­inducted into the Australian Funds Management Hall of Fame in 2014. It has $6.5 billion funds under management.

The purchase comes two years after the Woollahra-based couple sold Little Minnows cattle farm in the Southern Highlands to the pastoralist Chisholm family for $5 million.

Elsewhere in Mollymook, league footballer-turned-insurance big wig Mark Coyne and wife Ann have spent $4.425 million.

The Sutherland Shire-based couple ­secured a four-bedroom home on a 660sqm block on Mitchell Pde. It was for sale for around 80 days through Pryde, who marketed it as the most contemporary home on the beachfront to hit the market in over a decade.

STABLES FOR SALE

Horse owner and breeder Fred Peisah has listed his Warwick Farm stable premises.

It is part of a precinct near Warwick Farm racecourse that’s set to be rezoned to allow high-rise residential flats with a 17m height limit.

The 2042sqm site backs onto the train line, and currently has a three-bedroom house, and 16 stables and a feed room.

There is a $3.5 million price guide from CBRE agents Andrew Sukkar and Alex Mirzaian.

The listing of the Manning St premises comes three years after Peisah sold the Lomar Park Stud at Werombi, near Macarthur, he’d operated for five decades.

The retired solicitor pocketed $16 million for the 295ha holding, from Liang Zhen Lin of Strathfield.

Former jockey-turned-trainer Bill Prain operated out of the Warwick Farm stables during his decades on the track with the duo’s success coming most notably with Moment’s Pleasure.