How this $325k home became Sydney’s most expensive
A particularly unspectacular pale pink home, that last traded for just $325,000 has become Sydney’s highest sale of the year.
A pale pink home in Point Piper that last traded for $325,000 was Sydney’s most expensive house sale over the past financial year, going for between $80m and $85m.
One of Sydney’s leading prestige property valuers, Simon Feilich, of Dyson Austen Advisory, who helped compile the list of 10 sales, says there’s been a “contraction” in the total value of the top properties this year.
“The total value of the homes on the top 10 list is $470m compared with $645m for the year before, when the top sale was $130m for the Point Piper house bought by Atlassian’s Scott Farquhar” Mr Feilich said.
He attributes higher interest rates, inflationary costs and supply chain issues creating a more challenging business environment as possible influences.
But as Mr Feilich points out, at this level, one big sale, such as the record-breaking $200m-plus sought by “Aussie” John Symond in Point Piper, “could change everything”.
All but one of the top 10 homes are in the east, with one exceptional home in Manly selling for $35m. The exclusive suburb of Mosman on the lower north shore doesn’t make the cut, with the highest $30m. Late mail of a $38m sale in Rose Bay couldn’t be verified, so it didn’t make our list.
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1. Particularly unspectacular from the street, this year’s $80m+ Wolseley Rd top-seller was owned by medical specialist Philippa Harvey-Sutton, who inherited the property from her mother, Val Rundle, in 2016.
The family has owned it for 46 years, paying what was a decent price for the 1284 sqm waterfront block back in 1978.
The word is there’d been no recent renos, though it does have one of the best views in Sydney taking in the city, Bridge, Opera House, North Sydney and round to the heads.
As Brad Pillinger, one of the prestige agents understood to have negotiated the May deal alongside Sotheby’s Michael Pallier, says: “There is so much breadth of wealth in modern society … almost the sole factor driving elite prices is a lack of supply.”
Pillinger and Pallier are now understood to have the Rose Bay beachfront home of the Point Piper apparent purchasers, Frank Qiang Geng and Juanjuan Zhao, for sale quietly for $75m.
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2. News of second-top property sale of the financial year emerged in January, though it was wrapped up in time for Christmas: $80m, for the Art Deco treasure Boomerang in Elizabeth Bay.
The agents who did the deal, Paul Biller and Ben Torban of Biller Property, are continuing to stay silent about it. It’s a long settlement, though the rumour mill continues to run rife on the purchasers, with the latest suggestion the buyer is a property investor originally from Vietnam.
Boomerang is owned by Lindsay Fox, the Toorak-based billionaire trucking magnate, who’d bought it for $20m in the name of Fox’s daughter, Katrina, in 2005 from the late cleaning contractor and art collector, John Schaeffer.
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3: In third spot, Coolmore Australia boss Tom Magnier sold 142 Wolseley Rd, Point Piper for $51.5m to Ben Voltz, the Melbourne-based co-founder of e-commerce firm Rokt, and his wife, Briana in March.
The sales agent, Ken Jacobs of Forbes, who is known to have the listing of the Symond property Wingadal with Pillinger’s Brad Pillinger.
When asked about the state of the current top-end market, Mr Jacobs said: “There’s certainly some strong international inquiry but that hasn’t crystallised into sales yet.”
4: Hunter graziers and pastoralists Rob and Camilla Cropper sold their Luigi Rosselli-designed trophy home at 66 Kambala Rd, Bellevue Hill for $39.35m last September via Michael Pallier of Sotheby’s.
The result was almost seven times the $5.64m the couple paid for it in 2014 — though that was pre-renovation.
5. Telco tycoon Canning Fok’s $39m sale of his modern harbourside home at 13 Queens Ave, Vaucluse last October via Highland Double Bay’s Bill Malouf and William Manning comes in next.
The buyer was Sydney FC chairman Scott Barlow and his wife, Alina, who’d sold the waterfront Akuna for $60m last June.
The couple had decided the massive reno that Akuna needed wasn’t for them.
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6. A family behind a $100m hotel empire sold 48 Vaucluse Rd, Vaucluse for $36.2m last July, three weeks after it passed in on a vendor bid of $35m.
The luxury home was owned by the Balagiannis family — whose hotel stable includes sites in the Sydney CBD such as Mr B’s, Albion Place Hotel and Chamberlain Hotel and many others across Australia.
With Damien Cooley presiding, there’d been 11 registered bidders at the June 14 auction.
The highest real bid had been $33.5m for the property that was sold via Alex George and Peter Leipnik of Bradfield BadgerFox.
Settlement records show the buyer was Chunming Wang. At the time of the sale, buyer’s agent Sean Huang said: “A lot of Chinese who originally settled in the inner west and north shore have realised the value in the east so they’re all making the move, seeing the capital gain, good schools and lifestyle,” Huang said.
7. A Double Bay beachfront at 12 Castra Place, a few doors from where “Australia’s richest garbo”, Ian Malouf, spent $61m on two properties, a 101-year-old home owned by the late orthopaedic surgeon Basil Ireland and his wife, Ernestine, sold for $35m via Paul Rich of Rich’s Double Bay.
Although it exchanged last July, the property is yet to settle. It’s understood the buyer wasn’t Malouf, though he’s known to have looked at it.
8. The sale of two amalgamated apartments at 15a Dumaresq Rd, Rose Bay, for $35m by McGrath Paddington’s Luke Hogan and Frazer Watson stunned the locals in February.
Records show criminal lawyer Chris Watson and his wife Diane Barr-Watson bought one of the homes for $1.15m in 2003 and the other for $2m in 2012.
The amalgamated property apparently needs a complete overhaul, but its waterfront location and uninterrupted Bridge and Opera House views encouraged the buyers, introduced by Goldman Bros buyer’s agents.
9. In May, a newly built home at Fairy Bower with 180-degree panoramic ocean views smashed the Manly house price record by $10m in what’s the second-highest result ever on the northern beaches.
The incredible Madeleine Blanchfield Architects-designed residence, owned by Justine Acret, wife of Chris Acret, the co-founder of mortgage broker Smartline, at 44 Bower St had a $35m guide when launched to the market two weeks earlier, and sources advise it’s achieved very close to that.
The deal was negotiated Michael Clarke and Cherie Humel of Clarke & Humel.
Clarke says of the current Manly market: “I think this financial year has shown Manly is the most resilient market on the northern beaches … it attracts not just downsizers, but also upwardly mobile professionals, out-of-area buyers and people looking for a holiday home.
“What I’ve found over the past financial year is that when one segment seems to cool down, we have another segment only to happy to step in and bid at auction or make an offer.
“And the higher you go, the stronger the market is, because the higher you go the less affected by interest rates and the cost of living the buyers are.”
10. Last December, car repair garage owners Steve and Carmen Davidson sold their house at 10 Ginaghulla Rd for $34.75m after just two years of ownership, with the boss of an engineering supply firm that exports to China the purchaser.
The couple’s Espie Dodds-designed four-level mansion had a $38m guide via Raine and Horne’s James Nixon alongside Laing and Simmons’ Double Bay principal D’Leanne Lewis.
The Davidsons bought the house just two years ago for $28.5m, and although they’ve made a bit of a profit it’s understood they’ve done a $3m reno in that period. And the stamp duty on their $28.5m purchase would have been about $2m.
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Originally published as How this $325k home became Sydney’s most expensive
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