Ex-Crown boss Rob Rankin sells Woollahra trophy home for $35 million

Former casino boss Rob Rankin has sold the Woollahra trophy home Woodlands, pocketing $35 million from Bain & Company senior partner Chris Harrop and his wife Kathryn.

For more than the past two years, while the former Crown Resorts chairman has lived in a relative self-imposed exile in the United Kingdom, the 1880s colonial-style mansion has been quietly offered to buyers for more than $30 million.

The 1880s colonial-style mansion was sold by former Crown chairman Rob Rankin.

Rankin controversially declined to return to Australia in 2020 to give evidence at the Bergin inquiry into Crown’s suitability to hold a gaming licence.

The off-market campaign to sell the landmark property, prompted by Rankin’s split with his former wife Paula Bopf, was a stop-start affair given the high-profile renters who have at times paid upwards of $12,000 a week for the property.

Elton John rented it during his Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour in early 2020, Chris Hemsworth and his wife Elsa Pataky took up residence early last year during filming for Thor: Love and Thunder, and rich-lister garbo Ian Malouf was a longer-term tenant.

The Rankins never lived in the 1500 square metre property, having maintained it as a high-end rental since they bought it in 2003 for $6.825 million from John and Julie Singleton.

Rob Rankin with James Packer when he was appointed Crown chairman in 2015.Credit: Patrick Scala

Following an architect Luigi Rosselli redesign in 2008 it was rented by Hugh Jackman and his wife Deborra-lee Furness, and Rupert Murdoch’s eldest daughter Prue MacLeod and her husband Alasdair rented it for a couple of years until 2014, when they bought the nearby home once owned by John Laws.

Reports that it had sold in March for $30 million were dismissed at the time by The Agency’s Ben Collier and buyer’s agent Simon Cohen, of Cohen Handler, although the agents have since been credited with the deal.

The sale since makes the Harrops just the latest in an impressive roll call of corporate heavyweights to hold the title.

Built in the 1880s for Samuel H. Smyth, of the Sydney Marine Assurance Company, it was for 60 years home to Clayton Utz senior partner Sir Hector Clayton, until he sold it in 1983 for $700,000 to stockbroker Ross Polkinghorne and his wife Diana.

Architect Luigi Rosselli was commissioned to undertake a major redesign in 2008.

The Polkinghornes sold it a decade later for $2.15 million to the late television pioneer Bruce Gyngell, who sold it in 1999 to famed ad man John Singleton and his then-wife Julie for $4.5 million.

The Woollahra home’s pedigreed past is mirrored by author Sulari Gentill in her series of historical crime fiction novels, Rowland Sinclair Mysteries, set in the Depression, in which Woodlands is the grand home of the wealthy pastoralist Sinclair family.

Chris Harrop, who sits on the board of Social Ventures Australia, is undergoing somewhat of a city-swap with fellow Melburnians, the prefab construction boss Nick Leos and his wife Emma.

The Leos family recently bought the Harrops’ Toorak home for $22 million, with plans to return to Melbourne from Sydney.

The Leoses recently listed the Bellevue Hill home that they bought in 2018 for $16.5 million with $38 million hopes.