Why did the billionaire cross the road? To buy a $30 million mansion

Audio king Peter Freedman already ranks among Potts Point’s best-housed locals thanks to his record $16 million penthouse purchase in 2018, but his property status is set to rise even further after he crossed the road to buy one of the area’s most expensive houses.

The landmark Regency Revival-style marine villa, known as Jenner House, has long been regarded as one of the suburb’s most significant houses, dating back to 1870 when it was built for the Hordern retail dynasty.

The historic Jenner House in Potts Point sold for about $30 million to the man across the road, Peter Freedman.Credit: Domain

“I have been admiring Jenner House for a very long time, and I am incredibly excited to be the next custodian,” Freedman said. “I hope I do it proud.”

While the sale price remains a well-guarded secret, Raine & Horne Unlimited’s Samuel Schumann was asking $34 million before it sold, and sources say the result was close to $30 million after negotiations by Freedman’s buyer’s agent Byron Rose.

Freedman’s latest purchase comes soon after he joined the ranks of Australia’s billionaires – worth an estimated $1.35 billion on this year’s Financial Review Rich List 200 – thanks in large part to his audio equipment giant, Rode Microphones.

Rode Microphones’ Peter Freedman is expected to restore Jenner House to its former glory.Credit:

Rode has done well globally in the post-pandemic market, with offices now in the US, Germany, China and Japan, a distribution that recently expanded to include 1400 Target stores across the US, and some 600 people employed at the company’s facility in Silverwater.

Freedman, 64, first made an impression locally five years ago when he paid $16 million for the Ikon penthouse of the late Macquarie banker John Caldon and media personality Lyndey Milan, setting an apartment record for the suburb.

The heritage-listed Jenner House is no less significant, even if it is not expected to top the $34 million house record set by another marine villa, Bomera, when purchased in 2019 by industrialist Sanjeev Gupta.

The six-bedroom residence on almost 2000 square metres was designed by colonial architect Edmund Blacket for Lebbeus Hordern and long owned by the Department of Defence until sold in 1998 for $2,275,000 to horse breeder Tony Petersen.

Jenner House sold just weeks after it was passed in at auction on a $33 million bid.Credit: Domain

He then sold the property for $15 million in 2009 to luxury car dealer Terry Mullens and his wife Wendy, after his bid to subdivide the Macleay Street property failed – thanks to opposition from the likes of art critic Leo Schofield and the late Jack Mundey.

The Mullenses had been trying to sell the house since spring 2021, and settlement will reveal how they fared.

Great rates

As former coal magnate-turned-discharged bankrupt Nathan Tinkler chases a $30 million buyer for his gargantuan estate at Sapphire Beach, the City of Coffs Harbour is chasing him for five years worth of outstanding rates.

The two-hectare estate Noorinya at Sapphire Beach last traded in 2008 for $11.5 million.Credit: Domain

Or at least council is pursuing Tinkler’s Noorinya Holdings, the company that owns the two-hectare beachfront property and which was placed into administration two years ago.

For the record, it is not the administrator FTI Consulting, nor council pushing for the sale, but Tinkler himself, who hopes to secure a record price for the property his company purchased for $11.5 million back in 2008 when he was a billionaire.

Nathan Tinkler has called the Sapphire Beach estate his home since he was a billionaire in 2008.Credit: Tash Sorensen

Tinkler’s grand home is among 40 properties that owe a collective $1.15 million in outstanding rates and charges to the City of Coffs Harbour for the past five years, for which a motion was passed in April to proceed with the sale of land process.

Council declined to reveal the specific debt owed by each property, but its own website estimates rates payable on Tinkler’s home since 2018 total more than $105,000.

Given the property comes with 15 bedrooms, 15 bathrooms and a 25-metre lap pool, the sale should be good to at least cover the rates.

Quiet listing

Trophy home shoppers are being quietly offered the Bellevue Hill residence of pastoralists Robert and Camilla Cropper for $40 million by Sotheby’s Michael Pallier.

The listing only came to light because the house next door sold last week for $61.5 million to freight boss Arthur Tzaneros, prompting a whole new take on the local price-per-square-metre game.

For those with the $40 million ready, the Cropper’s three-level house was purchased in 2014 for $5.64 million from Suzanne and Andrew Binetter, former chief of Nudie Juice. It was redesigned by architect Luigi Rosselli a year later into what is now a six-bedroom residence with formal and informal living rooms, music room, office, pool and basement garaging.