Victorian house price record: Stake.com founder Ed Craven splashes $80m on Toorak mansion
A 27-year-old crypto king has splashed a staggering $80m on an unfinished St Georges Rd mansion to eclipse Victoria’s house price record.
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A 27-year-old crypto king has splashed a staggering about $80m on an unfinished St Georges Rd mansion to eclipse Victoria’s house price record.
Ed Craven, the co-founder of Stake.com, paid the record amount — one of the highest prices ever paid for a home in Australia — for Toorak’s “ghost mansion”, which has stood idle for more than three decades on the ultra-exclusive stretch.
It comes as another stately mansion at 17 St Georges Rd nears a sale in excess of $70m, which would have been a state record prior to Mr Craven’s massive buy.
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The fresh-faced tech kingpin is the public face of Stake.com, a privately owned cryptocurrency-friendly online casino that offers sports betting and casino games.
His latest purchase, on about 7200sq m, has been owned by David Yu, director of property developer Ausvest Holdings.
The deal — agreed to last week in an off-market transaction negotiated for Mr Craven by buyer’s agent Kim Easterbrook with Marshall White director Marcus Chiminello — obliterates Victoria’s previous record set by Malvern’s Stonington Mansion at $52.5m in 2018.
Mr Craven was also reported in March to have paid $38m for another Toorak mansion on almost 2000sq m on Orrong Road that had been rebuilt by property developer Will Deague.
Mr Chiminello is also close to inking a deal in excess of $70m for the circa-1939 Georgian Revival mansion at No.17, which officially hit the market with Victoria’s largest ever advertised house price guide of $65m-$70m last month.
That 10-bedroom house is “under offer”, with the price understood to be in excess of $70m and all the interest coming from local buyers.
Mr Chiminello said he was unable to comment.
Top-end buyer’s advocate David Morrell also would not comment, but previously told the Herald Sun it was “like driving into an English estate” but would require a “$15m reno”.
Mr Yu put Mr Craven’s latest purchase on the market in 2020, just shy of 30 years after he had paid $5m for it in 1991.
He had bought the property from then-Hoyts boss Leon Fink — who had half-built a French Renaissance-style mansion on the block before offloading it in the midst of the early 1990s recession — and has left it untouched since.
Mr Yu had reportedly turned down several offers for the property before quietly putting it on the market in early 2020.
He had previously attempted to subdivide the landing into nine lots in 1992, an application that was rejected by local planning authorities.
The mansion at No.17 was designed by Melbourne architects Hughes and Orme and has not been sold since the 1970s.
It has been listed by the family of late engineer Radovan Basil Nanut, who died in 2004 and left the estate to his wife, Marguerite, and three children James, Pia and Elizabeth.
It has been at the centre of a bitter family feud, with James launching legal action against his two sisters and mother last year.
The incredible 7854sq m property features a tennis court, Victorian glasshouse, and separate guesthouse among its botanic gardens that are within the grounds of Toorak House, Melbourne’s former Government House, discreetly set well back from the street behind high walls and a sweeping drive.
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