Hawkins finds buyer for $30m Whale Beach mansion, when finished

Jennifer Hawkins and her husband Jake Wall have barely begun building their next luxury mansion on the Whale Beach clifftop than they look to have already found a buyer for it – for close to $30 million.

This is the double block once owned by the late Joan Sutherland and purchased by the photogenic couple in 2020 for $6.95 million from Museum of Contemporary Art chair Lorraine Tarabay following their success selling their Newport home to tech billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes.

Jennifer Hawkins and Jake Wall have found a buyer for their Whale Beach project.Credit: Ben Symons

Grand plans to demolish the 1950s house were approved last April to make way for a new four-storey residence complete with a gym, yoga room, home theatre, sauna and half a basketball court at a cost of more than $3 million.

As rain put a stop to work on the 3200-square-metre site this week, word leaked that a structured deal had been struck on the property totalling $30 million, part of which is for the land and the rest for the residence once completed by Wall’s design and construction company J Group.

Fronting a put and call option on the title on behalf of the mystery buyer is finance entrepreneur Simon Tripp, best known for his interest in the historic Fernhill estate at Mulgoa before it was sold for $27 million to the state government to make way for a cemetery.

The 3200-square-metre site where Jennifer Hawkins and Jake Wall are building a $30 million mansion.Credit: Wolter Peeters

Hawkins and Wall’s reputation as high-end home builders did well on the back of the sale of their Newport property, Casa Paloma. It set a $24.5 million house price high for the northern beaches at the time, and achieved the unthinkable of relegating Palm Beach to second-rate status in the local house price records.

Of course, the natural order of values has been restored in Palm Beach’s favour thanks to a $27 million purchase last year by hospitality entrepreneur John Szangolies, but that is likely to last only as long as it takes Hawkins and Wall to finish their latest home project.

Northbridge takes the crown

Still with the most expensive suburbs of the north shore, Mosman has lost its claim to the lower north shore crown to Northbridge.

The Corben Architects-designed house, home of Michael and Helen Carapiet, has sold for more than $25 million.

The sleepy Middle Harbour suburb – best known as the long-time home of the late Bob Hawke – now takes top honours thanks to an off-market sale of more than $25 million this week of the home of corporate heavyweight Michael Carapiet and his wife Helen.

Atlas’ Michael Coombs won’t reveal the price given the ink is still drying on the deal, but the exact sale price need not be much more than Mosman’s $25 million top result of 2018 set by Sydney Swans chairman Andrew Pridham.

Not that there’s any shortage of Mosman estates up to the task of recalibrating things in its favour, as the likes of Ken Done, Ros Oatley and Roy Manassen well know. They just won’t sell the family home to prove it.

Link Group chairman Michael Carapiet and his wife Helen are downsizing from Northbridge.Credit: Peter Braig

Carapiet, the former Mac banker and now Link Group chairman, paid $4.8 million for the property in 2013 before he commissioned Corben Architects to design the striking five-bedroom residence with an internal lift, a heated pool, a gymnasium and an inclinator to the jetty.

Gamer’s Pyrmont digs

Not to make anyone feel too badly about their success – or lack of – in the property market, but the “architectural masterpiece” in Pyrmont that hit the market this week for $4.5 million is owned by a 27-year-old university drop-out.

Not that Elliott Watkins hasn’t had some success in his many hours spent playing Fortnite. With 9.46 million subscribers, he is ranked among Australia’s top YouTubers, to whom he is best known as Muselk.

The Pyrmont terrace of Elliott Watkins last traded in 2017 for $3.65 million.

Watkins was only 23 and a recent co-founder of gaming talent agency Click Management when he bought the four-bedroom Victorian terrace with a pool for $3.65 million, having recently moved from Melbourne.

Elliott Watkins’s Muselk has 9.46 million subscribers on YouTube.

Since then, he has been streaming his live video game commentaries to the many millions from the office space set above the garage at the back of the Pyrmont Street house. It has no doubt made his mother, former Coca-Cola Amatil chief Alison Watkins, proud, and helped fund the $9.125 million Tamarama house he bought from Hollywood cinematographer Peter James in 2020.

McGrath’s Jack Sou has scheduled a March 12 auction.

Point Piper’s high hopes

Five years after Kristy Mirzikinian became an internet sensation thanks to her reaction to a sinkhole that opened up out the front of her Point Piper home, she is selling up.

The five-bedroom Point Piper house comes with one of the few tennis courts in the suburb.

“My personal trainer has come, my electricity is off and now I don’t know what to do,” she told reporters assembled outside her home she shares with husband, champion poker player Warwick Mirzikinian.

Kristy Mirzikinian’s response to discovering a sink hole had opened up opposite her Point Piper home went viral in 2017.Credit: ABC News

There were plans for a redesign a few years ago thanks to a hard-fought approval from the Land and Environment Court, but instead of the rebuild, she has listed it with Ray White Bondi Junction’s Riki Tawhara with $30 million expectations.

The five-bedroom house with a pool and one of only half a dozen tennis courts in the suburb was purchased new in 2008 for $9.55 million.

Southern Highlands price hike

Southern Highlands real estate is getting more expensive by the day. A week after it was revealed the Ainsworth pokie machine family had sold Braesyde for more than $20 million comes word that Fonthill in Mittagong has sold for much the same price.

Developer “Fred” Fouad Deiri’s Deicorp Asset Holding has already lodged interest on the home of property investors Michael and Melissa Mahony, and settlement will confirm the result given no comment from Drew Lindsay’s Samuel Lindsay.

Fonthill is set on 42 hectares purchased by the Mahonys as land in 1998 for $1.2 million, on which architect Howard Tanner and TKD Architect’s John Rose designed what is regarded as one of the largest private residences in the district.

It was only two years ago that the district record stood at $15 million – set by Mike Cannon-Brookes for 155 hectares in the Point Piper of the Southern Highlands, Kangaloon – but that looks almost reasonable this side of the pandemic thanks to Victor Comino’s $48 million purchase of 109 hectares in Burradoo.

No wonder local agent Angus Campbell-Jones was hastily shooed away from the Kangaloon home of cattleman Theo Onisforou in 2019 despite bearing an offer of $65 million for his 400 hectare property.

“At the time I thought it was drug money,” said Campbell-Jones. The issue wasn’t just that Onisforou’s is the largest farm locally but also that it comes with a 44-room residence and at least a dozen other houses on the property. Onisforou, who has expanded his farming empire to Gundagai in recent years, says he is not a seller.

Kevin Maloney, pictured in 2008.Credit: Andrew Quilty

Woollahra’s high-end downsizers

Rich list businessman Kevin Maloney and his wife Lesley are downsizing from one end of Woollahra to another, paying $13 million for a newly built apartment in the heart of the village.

The couple no sooner settled on the top floor of the Fred Nasa-developed triplex next door to the Sydney home of Rupert Murdoch’s eldest daughter Prue MacLeod than word leaked they have already sold up the road.

Since 2008, when Maloney made his debut on the rich list, the couple has owned the whole top floor of the Conservatory on Wallis Street building, having paid $9.31 million.

An artist’s impression of the Woollahra penthouse bought by the Maloneys for $13 million.

BradfieldCleary’s Georgia Cleary, who sold it to the Maloneys, declined to comment on its latest sale, but was asking $13 million to $15 million for the Ercole Palazetti-designed digs, before it was snapped up.

The Maloneys will be sharing their new triplex building with Nasa, who is expected to keep the garden apartment for himself. The remaining apartment is for sale for $12.5 million through Highland Property’s Bill Malouf and The Agency’s Steven Chen.