The Sell: No bids at auction of Sasha Mielczarek’s Bowral project
There were no bids at a chilly Bowral auction of inaugural Bachelorette winner Sasha Mielczarek’s residential project this weekend. Read who’s buying what property and where in The Sell.
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Inaugural Bachelorette winner and builder Sasha Mielczarek put his Bowral residential project to onsite weekend auction, but there were no bids.
The striking, nearly all-white property had been listed with a $3.2m price guidance through Sarah Burke and Kirsti Sturluson at DiJones Bowral.
Amid chilly conditions, auctioneer David Scholes briskly closed the auction, telling the crowd of 30 that the prospective buying parties were not in a position to purchase.
The 919sq m Merrigang St property comprises two residences: a three-bedroom 1890s home with raked ceilings, and a separate self-contained studio, making it ideal for a dual-living set-up.
Mielczarek, with his mother Kym, had paid $1,315,000 for the rundown 1890s cottage in 2020.
My mother and I purchased the property at the start of the pandemic with the aim of restoring it to its former glory,” he told his 106,000 Instagram followers. “We couldn’t be happier.”
Mielczarek credited his mother as his “eyes and ears during construction”. It was listed for rent at $1800 a week on its late-2022 completion.
Local hotelier Marty Downs has his nearby cottage Annandale — credited as being capable of grossing $160,000 annually as short-term accommodation — listed through Lisa-Marie Cauchois at Drew Lindsay Sotheby’s International Realty.
According to PropTrack data, the median price for a house in Bowral is $1.57m, down 10 per cent annually, based on 183 sales over the past year.
In 2020, Mielczarek bought at Burleigh Waters on the southern Gold Coast, with his partner and now wife Carly Cottam.
They had a baby girl, Stevie Marie, last August.
Mielczarek won the final rose from Bachelorette Sam Frost on the Channel 10 show in 2015.
LUXURY DIGS FOR SALE AT FORMER CELEB HANGOUT
Savvy entrepreneur Peter Metzner has listed the luxury apartments, including a three-storey 411sq m penthouse, in his off-the-plan project at the former La Strada restaurant premises in Potts Point.
It is the Macleay St space currently occupied as the Snack Kitchen pop-up by the Tezini family.
Ben Stewart at Stewart Residential/CBRE has listed the apartments. David Mitchell Architects worked on the building plans, while Fiona Lynch has done the interiors for the six-storey building.
The landmark restaurant premises were sold in 2021 by Giovanna Toppi, the late matriarch of the acclaimed restaurateur family who died in 2021.
Toppi’s 322sq m corner property had been acquired in 1979 for $348,000, with the elegant restaurant opening soon after with her late husband Walter.
Until its 1996 closure, the restaurant was the place to dine for all visiting international stars. The celebrity diner photos — including Mick Jagger, Elton John, Sylvester Stallone, Sammy Davis, Rod and Rachel Stewart, and Shirley Bassey — were hung in its discreet Hughes St entrance.
It also saw the new generation of diners, including Michael Hutchence and Kylie Minogue.
The black-vested waiters, Ricky Spinelli and Franco Perez, served countless steak dianes and crepe suzettes to regulars.
La Strada took its name from the 1954 Federico Fellini film released around the time Toppi arrived in Sydney from Naples. She came by herself, with little money and no English, starting as a dishwasher.
It was 1988 when she opened Machiavelli with daughters Paola and Caterina.
Metzner, the owner of events and fashion PR company The Arc Factory, has a passion for undertaking boutique apartments above commercial space.
“Being involved in the hospitality industry, the significance of Giovanna and La Strada Ristorante was not lost on me, when purchasing the building. I told Giovanna it was my intention to celebrate her amazing legacy,” Metzner said.
He and wife Rose intend to take an apartment.
All four apartments will have basement parking, bike storage and access to an 85sq m communal roof terrace with a wellness area, shower and barbecue facilities.
“La Strada is the first new residential building on Macleay St in 20 years, with approvals challenging and a short supply of three-bedroom residences,” Stewart noted.
HUMPHRIES’ HAVEN ON SALES STAGE
The family of the late entertainer Barry Humphries has listed his Quay West apartment in The Rocks for a March 21 auction.
The three-bedroom 30th floor abode in Gloucester St was bought direct from Paul Ramsay, the late founder of Ramsay Health Care, for $2.5 million in 2004 in the name of Bandicoot Corp.
The 167sq m space boasts striking views of the Harbour Bridge.
Its Ray White listing agent Francis Fusco has a guide in the $6 million range.
There are two marble bathrooms, one featuring a spa, and the apartment has two parking spaces.
There is a communal pool, sauna, spa, and 24-hour concierge service at Quay West.
Humphries had upgraded from a 26th floor apartment he bought for $1.015 million in 2001 following the $2.52 million sale of the Rose Bay harbourfront trophy home Villa Florida.
Humphries sold his redundant apartment for $1.67 million in 2007 through Fusco.
Humphries died at Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital in April last year aged 89.
He was survived by wife Lizzie Spender, his four children Tessa, Emily, Oscar and Rupert, and 10 grandchildren.
He lived in West Hampstead, London, for more than three decades having married actor and food writer Spender in 1990.
DESIGNER FIGHT TO GET FOOT IN THE DOOR OF BELL ESTATE
The Supreme Court battle over the $128m-plus estate of late society stockbroker Colin Bell by his estranged wife Donna-May Bolinger has been set down for what is expected to be an engrossing 10-day hearing from Monday.
The main matter is the claim by the shoe designer against the estate following the death of the Bell Financial Group founder, aged 80, in 2022.
A further 10-day hearing is then expected to follow in late April before Justice Michael Slattery.
The stockbroker’s son Ned Bell has been the administrator of the estate.
In the initial 2022 probate proceedings, Justice Philip Hallen noted the case involved “significant and hard-fought contests”, adding “no doubt at significant cost to the parties, in determining various, long-running, interlocutory, and bitterly contested disputes”.
Bolinger had been set to inherit Bell’s longtime luxury $17.5m Rosemont Ave, Woollahra, home until a supplementary 2020 codicil was added to his legal paperwork around the time the couple separated after 10 years together.
His will had been written in 2015 — a year after they married at his Riverina sheep farm.
The parties are disputing Bell’s testamentary capacity in 2020, since it followed an arterial blockage and clot in the brain in 2018, with Bell then having an aortic valve replacement at the Mayo Clinic in the US.
In 2019, Bell had a serious seizure.
Bolinger, who was Bell’s fourth wife, was born in Canada in 1960 and arrived in Australia in 1983.
Shoes designed by Bolinger, including one with kangaroo leather, are held in the Powerhouse collection.
ROCKLEIGH ROLLS ONTO MARKET AT A COOL $100M
No sooner had some of the details of the Elizabeth Bay mansion Boomerang selling under wraps for about $80 million come to light than another prize harbourfront property being quietly offered for sale emerged from agent secrecy.
It is Rockleigh, a tightly held Point Piper estate that comes with $100 million hopes.
The pale pink home on a 1284sq m Wolseley Rd holding has a high knockdown probability.
Philip and Valmae Rundle purchased the property, near the so-called butter box apartments, in 1978 for $325,000 from Helen Pratten, the widow of printer Fredrick Pratten, who had died in 1977.
Dr Rundle died in 1991 and his widow, who was an Egyptian archaeology enthusiast, died in 2016.
There has been considerable family disharmony surrounding the estate.
Any sale of Rockleigh close to $100 million will be the top Sydney deal in the past two years.
Boomerang’s delayed settlement $80 million deal was reputedly secured pre-Christmas, seemingly taking the top spot as 2023’s most expensive sale, and thereby knocking the $76 million Bellevue Hill federation estate Leura into second place.
Scott Farquhar and Kim Jackson’s $130 million Uig Lodge Point Piper buy in late-2022 remains the priciest.
The 1926-built Boomerang had been on sale for about three years, coming with mystique, huge heritage obligations and even periodic misfortune since being vacated in the early 1960s by the first owner, sheet music publisher Frank Albert.
It was his oldest philanthropic grandson Robert Albert, who died earlier this month, who donated the historic schooner Boomerang to the Sydney Heritage Fleet in 1988.
Word has it that Wolseley Rd-based car wash boss Anthony Sahade came close to buying Boomerang, but decided to stay put.
Meanwhile, on the cheap side of the exclusive street, Retail Apparel Group co-founder Stephen Leibowitz and wife Pam’s home Vaynol has been listed with $65 million hopes. They bought it from Ben Tilley for $12 million in 2004.
The Leslie Wilkinson-designed house cost £15,555 in 1955 when it was built for General Sir Leslie Morshead.
WRECK WON’T SPOOK BUYERS
A somewhat spooky derelict home on a 607sq m holding at 52 Market St, Naremburn has been listed for March 16 auction with $2.9 million guidance.
It is apparently a three-bedroom, one-bathroom weatherboard home with McGrath estate agent Peter Chauncy not allowing internal inspections.
It was bought by Allan and Elli Chan in 2012 from shop assistant Peter Kontos, who acquired it for £4000 in 1965.
CHANCE TO LAND STUNNING ROOST
El Jannah chicken shop founders Andre and Carole Estephan are selling their Dural mansion located on Old Northern Rd.
The couple purchased the six-bedroom home for $4.6 million in 2014.
The abode, which sits on a 2.11ha parcel of land, has a $15 million price guide.
The grounds come with pool, championship-sized tennis court, six-car garage shed and space for horse stables.
PENTHOUSE IS A PRIME CUT
Victor Puharich, patriarch of the butcher family, has bought in Maroubra with wife Stephanie.
They have spent $4.5 million on a beachside penthouse on Marine Pde.
The whole-floor apartment atop a block of four spans 180sq m.
The three-bedroom, two-bathroom penthouse with wraparound balcony sold for a record Maroubra per square metre rate through Ellison Zulian’s Josh Ellison.
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