Billionaire problems: Sydney’s trophy home owners selling at a discount

As the halfway mark of 2024 nears, the year has already clocked up an impressive roll call of house sales making our already rich citizenry even richer, but records also show there have been plenty of hefty discounts to get many of these deals done.

Sympathy is likely to be in short supply for this year’s biggest discounters given they tend to be the same sellers scoring some of the highest prices.

Rockleigh at Point Piper sold for $80 million, the highest price for a home this financial year.Credit: James Brickwood

Take Rockleigh, the Point Piper trophy home owned by medico specialist Dr Philippa Harvey-Sutton. Before it sold for more than $80 million to businessman Frank Geng, it was being quietly offered for $100 million. So, ouch to the $20 million shortfall, but congratulations on scoring this financial year’s highest house price sale.

Just this week the award-winning designer residence Perpetua in Northbridge owned by venture capitalist John Riedl and his wife Dianne sold after a fairly big price adjustment.

The 1950s, Wilkinson Award-winning residence designed by architect Douglas Snelling and later redesigned by Alec Tzannes was listed last year for $15 million to $16.5 million, but when it didn’t sell it was relisted anew, this time with Ray White’s Stewart Gordon and Geoff Smith for $10 million.

Perpetua is the landmark modernist house designed by architect Douglas Snelling in Northbridge.

That did the job because it sold this week for more than that amount.

Former mining billionaire Nathan Tinkler copped a 46 per cent discount from his initial $30 million hopes on his Sapphire Beach estate north of Coffs Harbour.

Expect to see more of crypto billionaire Ed Craven at Sapphire Beach thanks to his family’s recent $16 million purchase.Credit: Eamon Gallagher

There was an offer of $25 million early in the campaign, but when that fell over he resorted to a $16 million sale to corporate interests linked to Jamie Craven, father of crypto billionaire Ed Craven.

Anthony Tzaneros, of the ACFS freight family, and interior designer Poppy O’Neil Tzaneros had initially hoped for $18 million for their Bellevue Hill designer digs, but look to have scored a little more than $14 million from rag traders Carol and Steven Moss.

The Bellevue Hill home of Poppy and Anthony Tzaneros was passed in on a vendor bid of $17.5 million at its November auction.Credit: Domain

The list goes on. Billionaire former garbo Ian Malouf was no doubt channelling 2023 when he listed two of his spare beachfront weekenders at Palm Beach for a combined $65 million. After all, he had renovated both houses since buying them for $20 million and $18.6 million each a couple of years earlier.

Ian Malouf’s $65 million hopes for two Palm Beach houses is likely to come in at closer to $48 million.Credit:

The more expensive of the two sold recently to snack food businesswoman Lenka Dransfield for what the agent’s advice said was $25 million but settled on title records at $18 million. The Palm Springs-style house next door, Gidget, is still for sale with a $23 million guide, despite recent reports in the News Corp press that it sold.

Environmentalist Geoff Cousins and author Darleen Bungey had hoped for $30 million for their Point Piper home but pocketed $23 million from former ASX chief Dominic Stevens and his wife Emma.

The Point Piper home sold by Geoff Cousins and Darleen Bungey to Dominic and Emma Stevens.Credit: Domain

Former tech entrepreneur-turned-clean energy investor Sean Neylon and his wife Phoebe copped a loss in Byron Bay, as did The Block’s Shelley Craft given the vendor finance that helped facilitate the deal. The Neylons’ corporate interests paid $9 million in 2022 but two years later, and with debts still weighing on title, it was sold for $7.4 million to Amanda Rohrig, wife of millionaire builder Glenn Rohrig.

Boost Juice’s Janine Allis could have paid $25 million in Byron Bay, but paid $17.12 million instead.

Still in Byron Bay, film producer Claire Jensz also discounted her Wategos Beach home. Listed for $25 million in September, it sold for $17.12 million to Boost Juice entrepreneur and Survivor Australia reality TV contestant Janine Allis.

Even the leading family behind the fundamentalist Christian sect Exclusive Brethren revealed a level of market softness in Dural. Gareth Hales, son of the church’s global leader Bruce D. Hales, paid $9.5 million for the luxury acreage in 2022. It sold recently for $8.45 million. You do the sums.

The new price is less

Getting the price right clearly matters. Heiress Francesca Packer Barham has read the market and adjusted expectations on her Darlinghurst sub-penthouse.

What was pitched at $35 million in a press release last November is now listed exclusively with Highland Property’s David Malouf for more than $30 million.

Francesca Packer Barham is selling her sub-penthouse in the Horizon building at Darlinghurst.

ACFS freight industry boss Arthur Tzaneros listed his Vaucluse digs for $55 million, and a year later it is an off-market offering through Highland’s Malouf for $45 million all while sources say it is being leased out.

Francesca Packer Barham paid $15.8 million for her sub-penthouse in the Horizon building in 2019.

Businessman Glenn Botha is still marketing his Bayview mansion Chateau Narla. What was $20 million to $22 million a year ago is now $14 million.

And the landmark Leuralla mansion in Leura at the Blue Mountains is no longer expected to sell in the $17 million to $18 million range. The grand 1914-built residence owned by four generations of the Evatt family was passed in on a vendor bid recently at $9 million, and is on offer in line with that through Christie’s Darren Curtis and McGrath’s Craig Pontey.

Leuralla was designed by architect Edward Hewlett Hogben in 1914 after the original house burnt down in 1904.