Millennial couple buys $25m Bellevue Hill home – before they’ve sold

In old-fashioned circles, sage real estate advice has long maintained the wisdom of selling before you buy in order to avoid any awkward financing issues, but that’s not advice the Tzaneros freight family have paid much attention to this year.

Anthony Tzaneros and his wife, interior designer Poppy O’Neil, have coughed up $25 million for a Bellevue Hill residence, and all before they have sold their designer digs down the hill.

The eight-bedroom mansion was sold for well in excess of its $23 million guide to Anthony and Poppy Tzaneros.Credit: Domain

The millennial couple’s new home is an eight-bedroom, five-bathroom house that was built in the late 1990s across a double block of 1360 square metres with a 19-metre swimming pool, gymnasium and two self-contained guest apartments. So there’s plenty of room.

It was a pre-auction purchase of the home of businesswoman Deborah Ricci after it was listed by Laing+Simmons’ D’Leanne Lewis with a $23 million guide, and comes amid expectations that it sold for closer to $25 million.

Poppy and Anthony Tzaneros at their society wedding in 2020.

Not that anyone is too worried about whether the couple will be good for settlement on the new home. Tzaneros is, after all, the son of ACFS Port Logistics co-founder Terry Tzaneros, while Poppy is the daughter of prominent developer Denis O’Neil.

Soon after Tzaneros, 35, and O’Neil had purchased their new digs they listed their home down the hill with Lewis in conjunction with Raine & Horne’s Alex Lyons. This is the house the couple bought for $7.45 million in 2021 and undertook a major redesign by O’Neil’s own interior design company, Poco Designs, that she founded with her mother Charlotte.

To the couple’s credit, the redesign is an impressive do-up, flush with new interiors, extended floorplan and high-end finishes throughout. At its Monday auction it was passed in on a vendor bid of $17.5 million, and remains for sale for more than that amount.

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

Tzaneros’s big brother, and chief of the family’s freight company ACFS Port Logistics, Arthur Tzaneros, has been somewhat of a role model for the buy-first, hope-to-sell later approach to real estate. He paid $61.5 million in June for a newly built residence on Bellevue Hill’s Kambala Road, only to then list his Vaucluse home for $55 million.

This is the same Vaucluse mansion Tzaneros purchased on dress-circle Olola Avenue in 2021 for $32 million, but which was recently listed with Highland Double Bay’s father and son team Bill and David Malouf with a revised guide of circa $45 million.

Lucrative designs

Still with Vaucluse’s Olola Avenue vendors, Nevin Serbest, who runs Efiniti Telecommunications, has pocketed $9.5 million for her three-bedroom house.

The Vaucluse house owned by Nevin Serbest was sold with approval for a rebuild by architect Bruce Stafford.Credit:

The Agency’s Steven Chen sold it to a buyer from Melbourne - almost doubling the $4.9 million Serbest paid for it in 2018. There were few improvements evident in the five years Serbest purchased it, but it comes with recently approved plans for an architect Bruce Stafford-designed residence.

Tilley trades up

Financier Adam Tilley and his interior designer wife Sally have purchased again in Woollahra, following the sale of their former home on Queen Street for $8 million.

The Queen Street house sold by Adam and Sally Tilley includes a mosaic by the late John Olsen.Credit: Domain

The couple, best known to property watchers for their former Point Piper home that was firebombed by the late businessman Michael McGurk, have paid $8.3 million for the long-time home of the late medico Frank Torok.

Interior designer Sally Tilley has traded in one Woollahra home for another one.Credit: Simon Alekna

The Tilleys almost doubled their money on their former home, having paid $4.11 million in 2014 to Paris-based expat Dom Ogilvie, who sold it with a mosaic in the light well by her late former father-in-law, acclaimed artist John Olsen.

The buyer is Linda Lapore, wife of Jeffries Printing owner and Planet Press boss Baden Kirgan. The Kirgans are moving from the Georges River waterfront where their Picnic Point property - two houses on a double block - sold recently for almost $5.5 million.

Rose Bay’s old pearler

Rose Bay Cottage, the oldest remaining house in Woollahra Council, has traded hands within the Paspaley pearling family for $9.3 million, landing ownership with third-generation pearler and executive director of the family empire Michael Bracher and his wife Mia.

Bracher’s purchase follows the sale of their Bellevue Hill home early this year for $10.475 million.

Rose Bay Cottage dates back to 1834 when it was designed by colonial architect John VergeCredit:

For the past 30 years the heritage-listed property has been owned by Bracher’s father, Peter Bracher, who bought it in a derelict state in 1993 and commissioned a painstaking restoration by architect Alan Croker that won a slew of master builders and conservation awards in 1997.

Mia and Michael Bracher sold their Bellevue Hill home of the past 12 years.Credit:

The house is regarded as one of the most important examples of colonial architecture thanks to its 1834 origins when it was designed by colonial architect John Verge. Despite such provenance, in the early 1980s it was subject to a development application to be demolished. The bid was knocked back and a few years later it was purchased by the state government for preservation.