Billionaire Scott Farquhar drops $130 million on Point Piper ‘castle’

A four-bedroom house in Point Piper has sold for $130 million to a couple currently renting in Bellevue Hill.

The fact that the buyer is tech billionaire Scott Farquhar and his wife, investment banker Kim Jackson, makes more sense of the deal, as does the fact the house is historically known as the Scottish baronial mansion, Uig Lodge.

The sale has smashed all house price records across the country.

The Scottish baronial mansion has reset Australia’s house price record at $130 million.Credit: Peter Rae

The landmark residence was sold privately by rag traders Steven and Carol Moss, ending their more than a quarter of a century ownership since they purchased it in late 1996 for what was then a non-waterfront record of $9.2 million.

Farquhar, the co-chief executive and co-founder of the Nasdaq-listed software giant Atlassian, already owns one of Australia’s most expensive houses, Elaine, also in Point Piper, purchased five years ago for $71 million.

In 2020, Farquhar had lodged plans for a major rebuild of the rundown Elaine mansion, but withdrew the DA soon after and has instead been renting the Bellevue Hill estate Barford.

Farquhar, 43, was until recently understood to be in negotiations to buy Barford from businessman Ian Joye, but that deal fell over amid $130 million expectations, and Farquhar and Jackson instead turned their spending power to Point Piper.

Scott Farquhar and Kim Jackson, of Skip Capital, now own more than $200 million worth of record-setting real estate in Point Piper.Credit:

“We’re excited to have found a family home ready to move into,” said a spokeswoman for the couple on Friday. It is expected to settle to the couple in the first half of next year.

Uig Lodge is on a much smaller 3300-square-metre parcel compared with Elaine’s almost 7000 square metres, but commands arguably the best views of Sydney Harbour thanks to its position on the highest point of Point Piper.

It tops the previous national house price record of $100 million set in 2018 by Farquhar’s Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes for another Fairfax family property in Point Piper, the 1.1 hectare estate Fairwater.

The most expensive residential deal is a $140 million apartment atop Lendlease’s Residences One tower at Barangaroo, but that is a consolidation of two apartments, the penthouse and sub-penthouse.

Uig Lodge made headlines in 1995 when it passed in at auction for $10.13 million. It sold a year later for $9.2 million.Credit: Fairfax Media

Point Piper now claims the three most expensive house sales in the country, including the $95 million sale of Edgewater to gold mining businessman John Li, who exchanged on it in 2020, but is not due to settle on it until next year. Edgewater was partly owned by the Moss family, of the Katies fashion retail chain.

The sale of Uig Lodge, just days before Christmas, takes this year’s trophy home tally to almost $1 billion worth of high-end residential sales in the top 20 sales alone.

The purchase will incur a stamp duty of more than $9 million.

Uig Lodge has long been regarded as among Sydney’s best residences since it was built in the style of a Scottish baronial castle at the turn of last century by Lachlan Beaton, inaugural commissioner on the 1901 Sydney Harbour Trust and founding member of the Royal Sydney Golf Club.

In 1916, it sold for £5650 to medico Alexander Rutherford and his wife Marcia, of the Cobb & Co coach family, and from 1961 to 1976 it was owned by newspaper baron Ezra Norton, owner of the now defunct Truth and The Daily Mirror newspapers.

Norton sold it in 1976 for $500,000 to the late Consul-General of Estonia and steel pipe manufacturing tycoon Aldur Kaljo, whose lavish parties became the stuff of legend until he died suddenly in 1994.

The Mosses commissioned a renovation of the heritage-listed residence by architects Stephen Gergely and New York-based Alan Wanzeburg that took three years to complete and included the gatekeepers’ cottage.

Farquhar was ranked Australia’s fourth-richest person when the AFR Rich List 200 was published in May, then given an estimated worth of $26 billion, but has since dropped to number 12 and a worth of $5.16 billion on the back of a 60 per cent fall in Atlassian’s share price this year.

In July, Farquhar and Jackson bought an Avoca Beach holiday home for $10.85 million.