Where we’d rather be: Car dealer buys one of Palm Beach’s priciest houses

The Palm Beach trophy home “Karala” has in recent years been a good barometer of local high-end values, not only because of the prices it has fetched, but because no other house has traded as frequently. The fact it has at times doubled as one of the area’s most popular holiday lets hasn’t hurt its reputation.

It sold again this week six weeks after it was listed with $29 million hopes, and the local rumour mill quickly revealed it scored another well-known owner, car dealer Paul Warren and his wife Elizabeth.

Karala has been bought and sold more frequently in recent years than any other house in Palm Beach.Credit: LJ Hooker

Given no comment from LJ Hooker’s Peter Robinson, it will be left to settlement to reveal if the result claims second place in the suburb’s house price records, effectively topping billionaire Richard White’s $27.5 million purchase two years ago, but well behind former garbo Ian Malouf’s $40 million purchase on the Pittwater beachfront.

Either way, Karala is a good house even by trophy home standards. The six-bedroom, six-bathroom residence was designed by Albert Hoggett on a prime north-facing parcel of 1700 square metres looking to Barrenjoey Lighthouse and with an infinity pool and interiors by Les Interieurs.

Paul Warren is executive director of the family founded car dealer Peter Warren Automotive.Credit: Janie Barrett

It was commissioned by hedge fund manager-turned-vintner Adrian Vanderspuy and his wife Vanessa, who used to make the most of it over summer by leasing it out for $25,000-plus a week to the likes of Elle Macpherson and the late media man Sam Chisholm before they sold it in 2017 for $12 million in 2017 to Silvana and Richard Marshall, former head of legal at mining giant Glencore Xstrata.

At the time it was the highest house sale for two years, but outdid itself three years later when it resold for $15.4 million to Boutique Resorts co-founder Sioned Rees Thomas, who shocked even the most bullish local property watchers when she sold it two years later for $26.5 million.

Taking the keys at the time were investment manager Frank Elsworth and his wife Amber, who needed somewhere to go given the sale was timed to coincide with $27.5 million sale of their nearby home to White.

Meanwhile, Warren, executive director of the family founded Peter Warren Automotive, the second-largest car dealership listed on the ASX, has already listed their nearby Palm Beach home Villa Du Cap with LJ Hooker’s Robinson and Dennis Kennelly with a $14 million guide.

Paul and Elizabeth Warren have listed the Palm Beach property Villa Du Cap with a $14 million guide.Credit: Domain

The 1930s-built house is billed as a “Palm Beach original” and shares a similarly north-facing aspect as Karala but on a 1400-square-metre block.

The Warrens purchased it in 2021 for $11 million from former Deloitte and Linklaters senior executive Frank Mellish following the sale of their home in Centennial Park for $12.5 million.

Eliza’s biggest fan

The two-bedroom apartment on level one of the Eliza sold for $2.4 million.Credit: Domain

Returning to Richard White, the WiseTech chief executive continues to be a big fan of the Eliza residential building opposite Hyde Park, with title records showing corporate interests linked to him now own five of the 19 apartments.

WiseTech founder and chief executive Richard White is linked to five apartments in the Eliza.

The latest sale in the Tony Owen-designed building is a two-bedder purchased for $2.4 million by a corporate trust fronted by White’s old bandmate Tony Jex and his former flatmate Reg Kennedy, the latter of whom lives at White’s Bexley compound Victoria House.

The purchase takes White’s ownership in the building to more than $32 million, including his $15.5 million penthouse he bought from Glencore’s head of mining Peter Freyberg and his wife Kylie.

The family jewels

Just three months after former mining billionaire Nathan Tinkler sold his Sapphire Beach estate on the Mid North Coast for $16 million to the family of crypto casino billionaire Ed Craven he has sold off more of the family’s real estate jewels.

Cedar View at Herons Creek was sold by the Tinkler family for $1.7 million.Credit: Domain

The Port Macquarie cattle farm that is home to Tinkler’s parents Les and Zelda Tinkler, owned by the family’s investment company Serene Lodge Investments, has been sold for $1.7 million, which is bang on the asking price that was set by Webster Nolan’s David Nolan.

The 40 hectare property at Herons Creek is called Cedar View, and last traded for $870,000 in 2006, the same year Tinkler made his first major mining windfall. Then aged 30, Tinkler bought the Middlemount coal deposit in central Queensland for $1 million, sold his stake a year later for $275 million worth of mainly shares in Macarthur Coal, and in 2008 sold his shares for $422 million.

Nathan Tinkler has sold two of the family’s Port Macquarie farms in recent months.Credit: Tash Sorensen

The Tinklers have also sold their nearby thoroughbred stud Serene Lodge at Kendall for $2,321,000, nicely within Nolan’s $2.25 million to $2.5 million guide. The 82-hectare property was purchased in 2007 for $450,000.

That just leaves the family’s nearby Cedar Park property, also in Herons Creek, that was purchased in 2010 for $675,000, and which is yet to be sold. Fingers crossed for retail billionaire Gerry Harvey it sells soon given he has a mortgage registered to the title.