The Sell: Charles Fairfax Vaucluse mansion sells for $18m
Highlighting there’s still strength and price growth in the prestige market, a Vaucluse mansion has sold for $18 million, real estate insider Jonathan Chancellor reveals.
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Businessman and John Fairfax dynasty scion Charles Fairfax has secured $18 million in the post-auction sale of his Coolong Rd, Vaucluse, offering.
Highlighting there’s still strength and price growth in the prestige market, the sale comes just a year after he and his wife Kate bought the Spanish Mission-style house for $14.95 million.
There was a $17.1 million top bid when it went to midweek online auction through Sotheby’s International agent Michael Pallier.
The couple put it back up for sale without starting work on its mooted renovation, and easily covered the $983,000 stamp duty bill for the 1083sqm holding.
There are harbour glimpses from the upstairs of the home featuring arched colonnades and painted timber shutters.
There had been four bidders when the home was offered last year through Sotheby’s by the Titerton family who’d owned the home for seven decades.
The Fairfax family seem set to remain in Dover Heights.
They also have a historic weekender in the Blue Mountains, Balquhain at Blackheath.
Eagles has landed her second Byron property
Ebony Eagles, the founder of Auguste ethical fashion label, has paid $8.35 million for a property on the semirural coastal outskirts of Byron Bay.
It was marketed as “one of the most enticing opportunities” in the Byron Shire.
Set on 6.25ha just north of Belongil, the Tyagarah property comes with ocean views.
It currently has a fitted out 190sq m shed, a smaller machinery shed, plus a couple of eco-friendly glamping tents, along with an outdoor spa, bath, and shower.
It was sold through Kollosche agents Karin Heller and Kim Jones, with approval for a luxury three-level home with seven bedrooms, five bathrooms, three pools, and a 10-car garage.
Melbourne-born Eagles, who founded Auguste in 2015, currently owns a hinterland retreat at Possum Creek which cost $2.1 million.
Earlier this year she secured approval to add a pool and spa.
Eagles, who initially founded Ebony Eve, which became known for its floral prints, when she was 22, has been influenced by Roberto Cavalli, Stella McCartney, Alexander McQueen “and anybody else who wears what they want, when they want and people who aren’t afraid of making a statement”.
Having grown up in Byron Bay, she was surrounded by alternative people with eccentric style.
“The whole bohemian look is beautiful, so interesting and feminine,” she said a decade or so back when she was asked where she saw herself in 10 years?
“Hopefully on my block of land, feeding my horses and wearing nice clothes.”
Tyagarah’s latest offering is Birdsong, a 2.6ha holding on McInnes Lane.
The main home, designed by architect Paul Witzig, was constructed by local master builder Bill McDonald amid palm trees and mature paperbarks.
Watered by the natural spring-fed dam, the property adjoins coastal wetland.
There is a self-contained pool house which functions as one of the leading music recording and production studios in the region, earning income for the landlord.
Since being established in 2015, Nick Didia has produced out of the LaCueva studio, with many musicians, including Bernard Fanning, Dirty Honey and Russell Morris, recording amid the views to the ocean and Byron Lighthouse.
It’s been listed by Christian Sergiacomi and Brad Cranfield at Pacifico Property who are seeking offers by June 30.
Anthony Walls at Max Walls International has had a 96ha Buckleys Rd holding on and off the market since its 2017 listing when a change in zoning had been mooted from rural settlement, with a permit for 450 tourists, to residential.
The land, formerly Tyagarah Tea Tree Farm, but long-time home of the Bluesfest, has been listed by the Manly-based Michael Hunter, founder of the Bracton Industries chemicals business.
Gallery with a view in new hands
The longtime Balmain home and private art gallery of the late Colin Laverty, the pioneering Sydney pathologist, has been sold by his widow Elizabeth.
The home comes with a traditional cottage which has a contemporary rear extension crafted by Wally Barda.
There’s a combined art gallery-dining domain alongside rows of glass doors that open to a garden, complete with Jeff Thomson corrugated cow sculpture on the grass patch, with views to the Sydney skyline taking in Barangaroo.
It was offered through Sotheby’s International agents Michael Pallier and Francis Egan, who’d expected $12 million on its April listing.
“Commanding two titles across 1216sq m, it is a residence of remarkable prestige and tranquillity,” their marketing advised.
Dr Laverty, who died in 2013 aged 75, amalgamated the Ewenton St holding, first spending $225,000 in 1982 and then $175,000 in 1987.
At its peak there were more than 400 artists in the couple’s collection.
The pathologist started collecting horse race paintings and wrote a book on Australian colonial sporting painters in 1980.
He’d also been collecting contemporary artists from the 1960s and Indigenous artists in the 1980s.
Many works still line the walls, including an early Emily Kame Kngwarreye and a Ken Whisson, but most have been sold over the past nine years.
Mrs Laverty has moved to Melbourne to be close to her family.
The Laverty pathology business was sold to Mayne Health in 1998, and was subsequently sold on to Primary Health Care, now known as Healius.
The sale price of the business, which had $9 million annual revenues, was never disclosed.
Farm offers a macadamia tree change
Retired corporate broker Neville Miles and his wife, artist Beryl, have listed their Byron Bay hinterland holding, Ballyshaw Farm.
It has been listed through Kolloshe Prestige agent Rob Lamb in conjunction with McGrath agent Nick Dunn, who are offering the 129ha Edward Pl, Knockrow, holding in one line or two separate lots.
There is the 60ha lot with main residence plus 3000 macadamia trees, and farm land for livestock and horses. The second lot is 69ha with an 18,000 tree commercial macadamia farm with cottage.
With sweeping coastal vistas, the main home was crafted with reclaimed materials including from the old railway bridge in Bangalow.
There is spotted gum exterior and grey ironbark timber floors throughout the home, which has soaring 7m-high cathedral ceilings.
They took their inspiration from their last home in Sydney, a former 19th Century carriageworks in Surry Hills.
Miles headed Ord Minnett, then Australia’s biggest broker with a 12 per cent market share, after coming to Australia from South Africa in 1986.
In its heyday Miles oversaw the float of John Fairfax Holdings, the Seven Network and Kerry Packer’s magazine operations.
The couple have told friends they will head north to coastal Queensland, where Neville intends playing more golf and Beryl will continue to paint.
Running up that Hillside price
Architect Jonathan Richards and his wife Olivia Beynon have sold their grand Hillside, Woollahra, apartment.
BresicWhitney selling agent Shannan Whitney was initially guiding $3.7 million ahead of its scheduled June 18 auction, with sale negotiations quickly hitting $4.35 million for the three-bedroom-plus-sunroom apartment after its first open for inspection.
The Edgecliff Rd apartment was bought for $2.78 million in 2019, just a year after Richards and Kirsten Stanisich started their own practice, Richards Stanisich, after stepping away from SJB Interiors.
Richards studied interior design at UTS, then registered as an architect.
Hillside, one of Woollahra’s most imposing apartment buildings, was designed by architect Aaron Bolot working with EC Pitt, with heavy Gothic overtones for the Farram accountancy family.
Built in 1935, it was held by the family until 1999, when the block of 11 apartments sold for $7.56 million.
Richards’ 172sqm strata apartment has harbour views with a north and easterly aspect, and tallowwood floorboards throughout the third-floor space.
There’s also a 24sqm basement space. It first sold at $950,000 in 1999.
Realestate.com.au puts the three-bedroom Woollahra apartment median at $3.4 million with 19 sales in the past year. The median time on market currently sits at a snappy 24 days.
Berry nice buy includes a creek
Having sold in Balmain East, architect Brian Zulaikha and artist Janet Laurence, one of Australia’s most renowned contemporary artists, have bought on the south coast, purchasing Birdwood just outside Berry.
Costing $3,525,000, the 9900sq m retreat comes with a creek meandering through.
There’s pavilion style accommodation plus a self-contained studio space, dubbed the Birdsnest. It has pressed metal walls in its bathroom.
It last sold at $1,245,000 in 2017.
It sold through Jacqueline Crapp at Raine & Horne Berry.
The couple recently sold their award-winning one-bedroom Balmain East home for $5.85 million to Patrick Streule, the principal software architect at Atlassian. The near harbourfront home, surrounded by fern gardens, was marketed as “influenced by the couple’s love of Japan”.
Bundeena beauty
Having sold Cronulla’s $14 million landmark Apollo Gate, the former TasFoods executive chairman Shane Noble and his wife, Lyn have spent some of the proceeds just across Port Hacking.
Their four-bedroom cliff-front home, on Bundeena’s most northerly point, cost $4.92 million through PPD agent Debbie Donnelly.
The couple are having a 55ft yacht built in The Netherlands, with plans to sail around the world.
Their recently sold mid-century modern home was bought in 2014 for $4.3 million, with some $4.5 million then spent on the renovations. The updated interiors were by Brendan Wong.
The early 1970s Cowra Pl house was designed by architect Reuben Lane for Kurnell sand miner Tom Breen and his wife Merrilyn.
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