The Sell: Fraudster’s penthouse sells after price slash
The Edgecliff penthouse listed by the receivers of the estate of fraudster Melissa Caddick has been sold four months after its asking price was slashed.
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The Eastpoint Tower, Edgecliff, penthouse listed by the receivers of the estate of fraudster Melissa Caddick has been sold four months after its asking price was slashed.
Spanning 143sq m of internal space, the three-bedroom, three-bathroom penthouse was initially listed with $5.5m hopes for an October auction.
The guidance for the 19th-floor Ocean St abode was then revised to around $4.5m and to $4m more recently. The Mirvac-built, Eastpoint Tower apartment, which has views of the CBD and harbour, sold at an undisclosed price through Mary Lin at Sydney Sotheby’s.
The fraudster bought it for her parents for $2.55m in 2016 but Caddick used stolen client funds along with persuading her parents, Barb and Ted Grimley, to pay $1m in return for a nominal one-third ownership and rent-free life tenancy.
Her parents vacated the apartment after the receivers agreed to pay them $950,000. They have since spent $800,000 in southern Sydney.
Caddick vanished in November 2020 after being raided by ASIC and the Australian Federal Police. She had stolen more than $23m from family and friends in an elaborate Ponzi scheme with her company, Maliver, operating without an Australian Financial Services licence from 2013.
Her Dover Heights house secured $9.8m in the biggest return to investors in late 2022. Such was the fascination that a $10,000 refundable deposit was required to view the fraudster’s former home in an attempt to separate stickybeaks from serious buyers when it was listed by Lin and her colleague Michael Pallier.
The listing came after repairs, repainting, recarpeting and pool compliance at the four-storey high-security Wallangra Rd home. There was also decor styling with virtually no trace of Caddick.
It sold to Tongna He, who was unaware of the house history.
The receiver recently updated the accounts with $24,000 in art sales, but the proceeds are waning save for some unsold sneakers, unless recovery efforts against investors who were repaid their initial investment and the profit from the fictitious share portfolio occurs.
Creditors have been advised by Bruce Gleeson, the receiver, that the receivership is likely to wind up next February.
ROB THE BUILDER’S HAVEN HITS HEIGHTS
Celebrity builder Rob Palmer and his wife Gwen have listed their longtime Allambie Heights home.
McGrath Manly agent Tim Cullen is marketing the six-bedroom, four-bathroom abode with $3.5m hopes.
It is being marketed as “an idyllic coastal sanctuary backing on to Manly Dam Reserve”.
“We have views over the bush and dam, where we spend a lot of time swimming, bushwalking and riding our mountain bikes,” Palmer said.
“It’s hard to believe we’re in the city,” he added.
The former presenter on TV’s Better Homes & Gardens, and winner of the 2010 season of Dancing with the Stars, bought the property for $902,000 in 2008.
The couple lived there for four years before undertaking its renovation. Set on 613sq m, the Maroa Cres house featured in several episodes of BHG while it was being renovated and its extension and pool were added.
Palmer, who did breakfast radio on Triple M on the Central Coast for six years until late last year, credits Gwen for the design ideas. Palmer is a third-generation builder.
The house is scheduled for an April 6 auction as Sydney estate agents start to schedule post-Easter auctions.
House prices in Allambie Heights are up 7.1 per cent over the past 12 months, according to PropTrack data with a median price of $2.463m based on 50 sales over the past year.
But volume is well down on the 2021 peak, when there were nearly 100 house sales.
There were two auctions this weekend at Allambie Heights, with three auctions before Easter, and two scheduled for early April.
There were 918 auctions scheduled in Sydney this week, and 1032 auctions next week, according to PropTrack.
There are 1287 auctions scheduled for the Saturday before Easter.
OBSERVATORY OVERLOOKS POOL, PADDOCKS COUNTRYSIDE
Stephen Gaitanos, one of the co-founders of Scape, Australia’s largest student accommodation provider, has emerged as the $15.2m buyer of the Southern Highlands estate Williams Crossing.
The 40ha Glenquarry property has a large New England-style home with an attached four-bedroom guesthouse and a self-contained apartment above the four-car garage.
An observatory rises above the master bedroom with views of the countryside.
The main home features a two-storey drystone fireplace handmade from locally-quarried stone and an oversized hardwood mantle from old Sydney wharves.
Its exterior mixes timber with basalt stone under copper roofing.
The study with a meeting room is located in a separate wing.
There’s a mudroom with a custom-built dog bath. The grounds feature a swimming pool and 100-year-old trees separating the paddocks, which could support 100 head of cattle.
It sold to Varsity Agricultural Services Pty Ltd on delayed settlement terms through Drew Lindsay Sydney Sotheby’s International, having been initially offered with $20m expectations in early 2023.
The property last sold for $2.8m in 2007 when bought by the Studdy family, who built in 2015.
Braesyde ranks as the top Glenquarry sale when $22.59m was pocketed by pokies matriarch Gretel Ainsworth in 2022 for her 48ha property.
The prior record price was $11m in 2020 when Andrew Pridham expanded his farm with the 120ha acquisition of the Essington estate. There had been a $6m record paid in 2010 with the purchase of the 18ha Runnymede estate by David Baffsky.
The Hunters Hill-based Gaitanos and his business partner Craig Carracher raised $1.5bn last year as they target developing 10,000 built-to-rent apartments by 2030. It already has 16,000 beds in 33 buildings across Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide.
CUTE LITTLE WEEKEND RETREAT FOR STYLE GURU
Hermes Australia managing director Karin Upton Baker has spent $2.155m on an Avalon Beach weekender with views over Pittwater.
Baker has just returned from Paris, and a side trip to Marrakesh, to settle on the all-white three-bedroom cottage purchase. Presumably she brought back a few navy blue Hermes Mariniere dresses and shirts to wear around the peninsula.
Set close to the tip of Stokes Point, the hillside home has a wraparound deck with a new kitchen plus two new bathrooms.
Chyna Schreiber of Belle Property secured the sale of the late 1950s home, which was selling for the second time in six months following its $2.13m sale in mid-2023.
Upton Baker calls Darlinghurst home, having bought a stylish apartment in an 1860s sandstone manor in 2021 for $2.285m.
Upton Baker has headed the Hermes operations in Australia for 23 years with stellar results after drawing a close on her time in the magazine industry.
The local offshoot of the French fashion house gave its annual 2022 revenue as $388m, up from $297m, and its net profit as $87m from its six stores.
Known more for its Havaianas than Hermes products, Avalon Beach has long been the destination of creative fashion types.
Nancy Pilcher, a former editor of Vogue and then editorial director-at-large with Conde Nast Asia Pacific, and her husband Warwick have owned overlooking Clareville Beach since paying $125,000 in 1981.
$14.5M SALE SEES GREINER MOVING ON
Former NSW premier Nick Greiner and marketing expert Carolyn Fletcher recently pocketed $14.5 million when they sold their three-bedroom Point Piper apartment in an off-market deal.
It has been bought by the Goldberg family, which has sold in Vaucluse for $17 million after 40 years’ ownership.
The whole-floor 320sq m Pacific Point abode, which cost $5.5 million in 2014, had been tenanted during Greiner’s term as Australia’s consul-general to New York.
The couple, who vacated the Beekman Place New York consular quarters in February last year, have since gone their separate ways.
Greiner owned two-thirds and Fletcher the remaining third of the Wolseley Rd apartment.
Their 2014 purchase followed the sale of Greiner’s former matrimonial Centennial Park home, which fetched $6.25 million after his separation from wife Kathryn in 2013.
Greiner, premier from 1988 to 1992, now rents a contemporary home at Randwick for $2600 a week.
Fletcher has spent $4.525 million on a four-bedroom Woollahra townhouse that was settled earlier this month when bought from former high-flying corporate executive Danielle Owen-Whitford, who went on to found Pioneera, an AI-fuelled work productivity engine.
It last traded at $2.165 million in 2015.
SALE DELAY FOR OLD MANSION
Morella, the neglected 1939 Mosman mansion now vandalised with graffiti, has had its scheduled auction pushed back by its vendor, architect Edward Wei.
The property, with DA-approved plans, came with a $10 million-plus price guide.
The Eric Nicholls designed sandstone mansion was commissioned by Leo Parer,
co-founder of Stanford X-Ray, who bought the site in 1936 for £500 with wife Helena.
HISTORIC MOVE FOR TOP ESTATE
One of the oldest continuous farming enterprises, Coolangatta Estate, is on the market for the second time in its 202-year history.
It was established by the Berry and Wollstonecraft families just outside of Berry.
The 51ha site listed through Adam Morris at the Monopole Group operates as a 28-room resort, vineyard and wedding venue.
It comes to market after 75 years in the Bishop family.
PRICE ‘TROPHY’IN NEW HANDS
A four-bedroom, two-bathroom Naremburn trophy home has secured a suburb record through Peter Chauncy at McGrath at “just under $5.5 million”, about $100,000 more than the $5.38 million mark set in 2021 on Rhodes Ave.
The double fronted renovated Federation home on 747sq m at 13 Central St comes with an office, double garage with workshop and loft, pool and basketball area.
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