Portsea mansion Ilyuka sets Victorian price record

VICTORIA'S house price record has been smashed with the sale of Portsea cliff-top mansion, Ilyuka. 

Portsea's Ilyuka valued at $20 million.

VICTORIA'S house price record has been smashed with the sale of Portsea cliff-top mansion, Ilyuka.

A Victorian businesman is believed to to have paid around $27 million for the 1920s Spanish Mission style residence.

The buyer will also have to pay stamp duty to the State Government of $1,485,000.

Agents Kay and Burton have been asked not to discuss the sale by the vendor, former Computershare director Michele O'Halloran, who paid $7.5 million for the property in 1999.

Ilyuka was sold after an unprecedented $200,000 advertising campaign directed at millionaries around the world.

The main feature of the campaign was a film starring Channel 9 identity Brodie Harper.

Kay and Burton agent Gerald Delany said he was unable to reveal who bought the property.

``We are bound not to make any comment on the sale,'' he said.

The Herald Sun understands several foreign buyers were initially in the running for the house but in the end two serious parties were caught in a competition for the property.

 One of the potential buyers arrived in a helicopter to inspect the house.

The property was sold though an expressions of interest campaign and exceeded the expected selling price of around $20 million.

Expressions of interest campaigns can cause buyers to pay well over a property's worth. Unlike auctions, buyers are forced to submit their offers in writing and do not usually know what other people are offering.

Anyone who really wants a property is forced to offer over the odds.

The party that makes the highest offer is either sold the property or given the opportunity to make an even higher offer if their price is not acceptable to the owner.

Buyers advocate David Morrell said the price had taken Melbourne property prices to a new level.

"It's a frightening amount of money,'' he said. "No mansion in Toorak has sold for that amount of money.''

Mr Morrell said mansion buyers often believed that having a large home would help keep their  family together by giving their children and grandchildren somewhere to come.

"That is a purchase driven by the heart,'' he said. "I don't think the smart money would have paid that sort of money.

"There could be a bit of 'Look at me, I've made it'. Is that ego getting out of control?''

Ilyuka was built in 1928 for a Texas oil baron and according to the marketing campaign the property has been recently restored and renovated and ``now offers the very finest in modern family living with an outstanding collection of beautifully proportioned living, dining and entertaining rooms, designed with a captivating perspective across the stunning grounds of almost two acres and on to the sea.''

In addition to eight bedrooms, the home has eight bathrooms, a full-sized grass tennis court, basement cellar, a sweeping driveway, private steps to Point King beach and access to a private jetty.

The previous Victorian record house price is believed to be about $22 million recieved for the home of former Richmond Football Club president Clinton Casey.

His nine-bedroom, seven-kitchen, 12-toilet mansion in Shakespeare Grove, Hawthorn sale last year set off a chain reaction that lined the pockets of Melbourne's leading estate agents.

The buyer -- Autobarn boss Garry Dumbrell -- went on to sell his home, which comes with six bedrooms, a cinema and nanny's quarters, in Barkers Rd, Hawthorn East, for $10 million.

The buyer of Dumbrell's home then put his house up for sale with an asking price of  more than $2.4 million.
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