Karl Stefanovic’s Sunshine Beach buy looks a smart move

Cartoon: Rod Clement

The surprise $3.6m Sunshine Beach holiday home purchase by Nine Network’s Today Show host Karl Stefanovic should prove to be smartly prescient.

Noosa is our hottest property market and as soon as the domestic travel restrictions end, it will soar further as a destination.

Stefanovic and wife Jasmine Yarbrough, who runs a quaint shoe shop on Paddington’s William Street, spotted the four-bedroom hillside home 200m from the beach while holidaying over the New Year.

Their eight-week settlement terms saw them secure $2.88m financing from AFSH Nominees, a subsidiary of NAB.

Karl and Jasmine Stefanovic have purchased this four-bedroom ocean-view home at Sunshine Beach.

The vendor was chef Jean Luc Chaudet.

“Property will be the new gold,” Bell Partners boss Anthony Bell has been telling his Sydney glitterati set clients amid the COVID-19 crisis.

While his clients are scared about property, “in fact a bit scared about any transaction”, Bell expects them to head ­towards safe assets, including luxury coastal homes, given international travel by families won’t be happening for a long time.

Bell and wife Kelly Landry have been devotees of Noosa since they spent $10.3m two years ago. More recently, Real Housewives of Sydney property princess Krissy Marsh spent $9.8m on Noosa Sound.

Jasmine and Karl Stefanovic.

The Sunshine Coast’s record was set in 2018, when Melbourne IT entrepreneur Danny Wallis sold to Equis Energy co-founder David Russell for $18m.

Tennis legend Pat Rafter ­secured $15.2m two years ago for his beachfront, selling to Betty’s Burgers founders David and Louise Hales, who have returned it to the market seeking $20m through local agent Tom Offermann.

Sunshine Beach has a $1.95m median price for four-bedroom homes, according to real­estate.com.au and, based on five years of sales, has seen a stellar compound growth rate of 11 per cent.

Soldiering on

What is it about our invincible masters of the universe?

New York Morgan Stanley chief executive James Gorman tested positive for COVID-19 but, having only had mild symptoms, worked on tirelessly from his Manhattan home, and has made a full recovery.

The most senior Australian on Wall Street, who heads the US’s sixth-largest bank, only ­disclosed the illness after his ­recovery in an internal video message to his 60,000 corporate employees released on Easter Thursday. He stated that he has been asymptomatic for a few days and was cleared by his doctors last week.

The expatriate Xavier-educated Melburnian, who felt flu-like symptoms, had notified the board that presides over the $US64bn ($100bn) bank of his positive test. Margin Call imagines the former McKinsey partner, who dislikes being called Jim, likely stays in charge until he reaches 65, the company’s retirement age, in just over three years’ time.

After completing law at the University of Melbourne, Gorman joined Phillips Fox as an articled clerk around the time of the Ash Wednesday bushfires in February 1983. Representing the State Electricity Commission, the 24-year-old became an expert on bushfire law, then enrolling in an MBA at New York.

Back in Australia, it was Les Owen at Bell Potter Securities last month who was the first among Australia’s stockbroker class to disclose having the infection. He got it after being in contract with actor Tom Hanks while dining at Merivale restaurant Mr Wong.

Owen’s dose was likewise mild. It was like having “altitude sickness”, the Bellevue Hill resident advised friends.

That’s possibly an ironic reference to his $6.5m hillside home in Sydney’s east, where Owen saw out his isolation in the affluent suburb that actually varies in elevation above sea level from about 10m to 104m.

Owen is a close adviser to steel billionaire Sanjeev Gupta, whose never-ending global acquisition spree saw him recently buy the Romanian Credit and Investment Bank (BRCI). Having been nudged out of Barford, his grand Bellevue Hill rental, Gupta recently secured a little-used bolthole, the $35m Bomera close to the water’s edge at Potts Point overlooking Woolloomooloo Wharf.

Of course, Woolloomooloo was the depot in 1900 where victims of the bubonic plague were transported by steamboat across to the quarantine station at North Head, many of them buried at the cemetery.

The luxury hotel Q Station now on the grounds briefly offered a gimmicky 14-day self-isolating package from $100 a night, until it was closed down by government regulation.

On the rack

The administrators of the remaining 93 stores in the Colette by Colette Hayman fashion accessories chain have been largely unsuccessful in attempts to negotiate rent reductions with its 17 landlords. The next fortnightly $714,000 rent, excluding outgoings, is due on April 15.

Having closed all stores during the pandemic, Deloitte administrator Vaughan Strawbridge was in the Federal Court this week seeking and securing immunity from being personally liable since they aren’t intending to pay. The administrators had requested a 100 per cent rent reduction, but only received a 9 per cent cut across the portfolio, ahead of the proportionate rental discount code finally agreed this week by the federal and state governments for commercial tenants.

Justice Brigitte Markovic heard sales had “far exceeded targets” until March 9, when losses occurred due to social distancing measures. By March 16, sales were 50 per cent below the targets set after Colette entered voluntary administration in January and closed its then 33 unprofitable stores. The administrators also secured a suppression of some details as disclosure would affect the sale of the business or its recapitalisation.

Some 11 parties expressed purchasing interest, but by March 25 all had withdrawn. Margin Call noted interest had come from former rag trading operative turned property developer and Angus cattle farmer Theo Onisforou, who was prepared to back the dynamo Roxy Jacenko. 

A Lowy open house

The rental listing of the vacated Vaucluse home of shopping centre scion David Lowy provides a rare opportunity to look inside the private world of the enigmatic Lowy family.

The family tend to stay put in their prized positions, this one held since 1985 on the Coolong Road harbourfront next to Nielsen Park in Sydney’s east. David and Margo Lowy are New York-based, so the luxury offering is up for lease through Ray White at $20,000 a week, fully furnished.

Margin Call gleans the 1996-built home’s latest fitout was done by international interior designer Thomas Hamel.

The artworks lining the walls include a Rosalie Gascoigne and an installation by Dani Marti, the contemporary artist who divides his time between Cessnock and Barcelona.

There’s a lovely sculpture by the late Australian-American artist Clement Meadmore in the living room. A sculpture of a plane reflects David’s passion for vintage aircraft as he has a museum in Temora.

There’s also a music studio, soundproofed of course given Lowy’s guitar passion. In 2012, Lowy set up The Dead Daisies, described on their website as “a musical collective created by a rotating line-up that has featured some of the best rock musicians on the planet”. Currently the band has former Whitesnake guitarist Doug Aldrich, Journey’s drummer Deen Castronovo and Deep Purple vocalist Glenn Hughes.

The couple upgraded last year in New York to a $US36m apartment in the big needle building — One57. The W57th condominium on Billionaire’s Row ranked as New York’s highest-priced foreclosure auction, having been owned by a Nigerian accused of conspiring to pay bribes to the country’s former oil minister in return for steering oil contracts.

New York is closer to Israel where David, the eldest son, who runs the family’s investment office, can spend time with patriarch Frank. They retain apartments there, too.

It was 1971 when Frank Lowy and wife Shirley paid $310,000 for their Point Piper harbourfront home from Isabel Haynes, wife of Dr Byran Haynes. They bought next door for $1.3m 20 years later, to add a tennis court.

David and Margo Lowy bought their Vaucluse home for $1.95m in 1985, and considered moving in 2007 when they made a rejected $55m offer for Altona, Point Piper.

The property is perhaps best remembered for the glamorous parties thrown by amateur golf champion and electrical importer Oscar Hall O’Brien and wife Vera, from the 1920s until his death in 1953, when his estate was worth £511,000.