Annette Sharp: Building woes delay Anthony Minichiello and Terry Biviano’s dream home

Knocking down their home in Sydney’s swanky eastern suburbs then leaving the block as a building site for years has not endeared Anthony Minichiello and his wife to neighbours, writes Annette Sharp.

Building woes have held up a new family home for Terry Biviano and Anthony Minichiello, pictured with their daughter Azura. Picture: Instagram

Anthony Minichiello and Terry Biviano’s neighbours may have grown restless watching the grass grow around the portaloo on the couple’s Vaucluse building site, but the Sydney “It” couple say they are on track to finally move into their dream home next year.

Eight years after the couple bought their 1980s brick fixer-upper with a view to spending $560,000 on a partial renovation, the uninhabited shell of a brand new multimillion-dollar concrete pile stands in the original home’s footprint surrounded by scaffolding and a collection of increasingly frustrated neighbours.

Retired Sydney Roosters captain Minichiello yesterday confirmed he and Biviano had spent four years battling objections from neighbours concerned about the loss of harbour views in addition to myriad issues relating to the scope of the couple’s new three-storey house.

“I’ve had to put in four or five section 96s,” Minichiello said, talking us through some of the issues that have dragged the build into its fifth year.

“Building a house has been a huge learning curve for us, as first-time builders. Especially during Covid. The pandemic hit and everything shut down. Now we’re back into it. Work finally recommenced this year,” he said.

After one frustrated neighbour sent a photo of the still under-construction “Mini-mansion” to this column, complaining the build had been at a standstill “for years”, this columnist phoned the celebrity couple to inquire about delays to their Hopetoun Ave home.

Biviano scoffed at suggestions the couple had been stretched thin by the growing cost of the project, reinforcing her point by highlighting the fact the couple recently returned from a six-week trip to Europe. “If we couldn’t afford (the house), we’d have sold it,” she said, matter-of-factly.

Minichiello and Biviano’s new Vaucluse home has been under construction for years. Picture: Supplied

Although the one-time shoe designer’s footwear business is currently on ice, legendary league player and all-round nice-guy Minichiello is enjoying a spike in demand for his MiniFit primary school PDHPE fitness programs, and has ongoing commitments to the Roosters. Biviano said real estate agents had been calling “weekly” with offers on the home, something confirmed by one real estate agent who informed this column the property, when complete, could fetch between $10 and $12 million in Vaucluse’s buoyant market.

Unfinished, he said, it would still sell for upwards of $7 million — not bad for a $3.1 million outlay in 2014.

After welcoming their only child Azura in December 2013, Minichiello sold his Bondi Beach apartment the following year to move to the more stately Vaucluse, where the couple’s new home today sits alongside mansions owned by television’s Peter Overton and Jessica Rowe, billionaire hotelier Jerry Schwartz and, around the corner, Woollahra Mayor Susan Wynne.

The couple bought this Hopeton Ave home in 2013, then knocked it down.

Biviano dismissed rumours the family had moved in with Minichiello’s parents in Sydney’s west during construction.

Minichiello admitted costs on the project had “blown out” following the pandemic, something broadly felt throughout the construction industry.

Happily, he reported, painters and carpenters had recently been on site, while joinery and stonemasonry was now under way.

“It’s been a huge project,” Minichiello said, admitting he and Biviano had probably been “too eager” in the early days when they set about knocking down the original house and some trees.

The construction of a curved glass staircase is now holding up tiling on the ground floor but, the league legend said hopefully, the middle floor is almost complete, while the top floor is being delayed by stonework.

All of which means the owners have abandoned hopes of being in by Christmas and now expect to be in by Easter 2023.

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Originally published as Annette Sharp: Building woes delay Anthony Minichiello and Terry Biviano’s dream home