Rupert Murdoch and Jennifer Hawkins linked to neighbourly property deals

When it comes to the best buyer for high-end real estate, it’s hard to beat the next door neighbour. The Murdoch and Packer families have for years shown a great appreciation of their neighbours’ properties to expand the footprint of their respective Bellevue Hill family estates, but more recently on their other property interests as well.

Rupert Murdoch’s Cavan Station at Yass has grown by 758 hectares.Credit: AP

Rupert Murdoch has shaken off his broken engagement to Ann Lesley Smith by indulging in a bit of retail therapy by adding to his rural “farm” Cavan Station to the tune of $15.5 million for the Boambolo property next door.

The 758 hectares sold by LAWD’s Col Medway on behalf of the Topfer family is but a fraction of the 10,000 hectares that make up Cavan, but is set in the prized “golden triangle” of pastoral land on the Murrumbidgee River, none of which would have been lost on Murdoch’s eldest daughter Prudence MacLeod and her husband Alasdair MacLeod, the latter of whom runs the family’s agricultural business.

In Whale Beach, Cedric Lee, the son of the late electronics retailer Bing Lee, has sold his clifftop holiday home for $7 million – double the $3.5 million he and wife Deborah paid for it in 2009 – to the neighbour.

The Whale Beach house sold by Cedric and Deborah Lee this week is next door to the construction job of Jennifer Hawkins and Jake Wall.Credit: Domain

The identity of the buyer, however, remains a mystery given no comment by LJ Hooker’s Peter Robinson, and title records that lodge the property in a beneficial trust fronted by finance entrepreneur Simon Tripp.

Jennifer Hawkins has turned property developer in Whale Beach.Credit: Don Arnold

This is the same trust behind the purchase of the clifftop palace next door that is currently being built by Jennifer Hawkins and Jake Wall, who sold the project-in-waiting last year for about $30 million.

The mystery buyer behind the trust has lodged a put and call option on the Hawkins-Wall house and is not expected to settle on the purchase until it is completed.

The scale of the construction job is practically visible from space given it takes up the whole 3000-square-metre block where for decades celebrated soprano Dame Joan Sutherland spent her weekends before she died in 2010. The property was sold by her estate in 2015 for $6.9 million.

Cedric Lee doubled his money on the Whale Beach house in the 14 years he owned it.Credit: Jim Rice

Museum of Contemporary Art chair Lorraine Tarabay had plans to make more of the north-facing site during her five-year ownership, but instead opted to let the Hawkins-Wall clan undertake the job when she sold it to them for $6.95 million in 2020.

Palm Beach holiday home owners such as former garbo Ian Malouf, pokie scion Geoff Ainsworth and former model Toneya Bird are well known for their neighbourly acquisitions but are left in the shade of developer Garry Rothwell and architect Susan Rothwell, whose consolidation of a handful of houses is the largest in the holiday hotspot.

Meanwhile, in Belrose, no less, CBA’s head of macro portfolios Brett Gillespie and his wife Amanda have pocketed $12.5 million for their equestrian estate from David and Jennifer Austin next door, smashing the suburb record in the process.

The Hillcrest property at Belrose when it was sold by liquidators in 2010 for $3.9 million.Credit: Domain

The two-hectare property was known as Hillcrest when liquidators sold it in 2010 for $3.9 million, complete with championship tennis court, resort-style swimming pool, American-style barn and exercise arena.

But it is the Packer family who have been pioneers in the home empire building game, expanding the footprint of their Bellevue Hill estate, Cairnton, from one house purchased for £7500 in 1935 by Sir Frank Packer to what is now a 1.2 hectare compound.

Gretel Packer owns both penthouse apartments in the Macleay Regis, the most recent of which was purchased for about $9 million.

Sir Frank’s billionaire granddaughter Gretel Packer continued the family tradition recently when she bought the adjoining penthouse in Potts Point’s Macleay Regis for about $9 million to go with the one she purchased in 2017 for $8.75 million.

Developer Michael Teplitsky might be forgiven for thinking property consolidation is over-rated given the block of four apartments he owns on the Darling Point waterfront is now being offered for sale for more than $50 million.

The apartments were purchased singly between 2017 and 2019 for a total of $36.5 million, and are being marketed as “one of the last major developable waterfront sites” with DA-approved plans by architect Koichi Takada by 1st City Double Bay’s Julian Hasemer and Brad Caldwell-Eyles, and Colliers’ Matthew Meynell and Matt Pontey.