King of spin Warne in bayside house flip

Cartoon: Rod Clement.

Just when many luxury homeowners are shying away from listing in the eerie coronavirus era, retired cricketer Shane Warne is gambling on securing another profitable property flip in bayside Melbourne.

The legendary spinner has quietly listed his Brighton home with a $6.8m to $7.4m price guide in the narrowing opportunity of a pre-Easter auction.

It would see the King of Spin turn a tidy profit, albeit not quite the $8m he was rumoured to be seeking last year.

Australia’s all-time leading Test wicket-taker paid $5.4m for the contemporary French provincial-style double-storey home nearly two years ago. It was bought from private investigator Anthony Thompson, who had bought it from Essendon champion Matthew Lloyd and his wife Lisa Marie.

Warne, whose net worth is reportedly around $50m following his 23-year cricket career, has updated the five-bedroom home.

No formal reason has been given for the move that will see JP Dixon Brighton agents Jonathan Dixon and Chris O’Farrell put it to April 4 auction, although Warne is rumoured to have bought into the Saint Moritz apartment complex at St Kilda.

Warne has regularly batted well trading on the Brighton property wicket.

It started in 1996, when as a 27-year-old, Warne, four years into his Test career, bought into the affluent suburb. He spent $902,000 on a 1920s home that sold for $2.61m after renovation four years later. While realestate.com.au reported that Melbourne’s 74 per cent weekend auction clearance rate held up firmer than Sydney’s as virus scares escalated, luxury estate agents reckon the buyer market will go even quieter after the current heightened pre-Easter volumes.

“Talking property for many is now scary,” buyers agent Mal James said.

“Last week none of our buyers put pen to paper to offer when they could have,” he said.

George’s joint

The celebrity chef George Calombaris has opted to lease his grand Toorak mansion rather than sell it in a potential fire sale amid the fallout from his collapsed restaurant empire.

A Kay & Burton for sale sign erected outside the French provincial-style home of the former MasterChef judge and his family last month has disappeared.

No formal confirmation has come from listing agent Ross Savas. However, the cul-de-sac neighbourhood say Calombaris has instead installed tenants.

It would have likely secured around $4000 a week. The five-bedroom mansion with Paul Bangay gardens was bought in wife Nicole Tricarico’s name for $4.75m in 2013.

On Australia Day, Calombaris offloaded a redundant weekender for $1.01m, having paid $580,000 in 2013. The couple retain a $2.2m weekender at the nearby Arthur’s Seat.

The chef’s Made Establishment company had been in the red for almost four years when it collapsed in February, with its losses since 2016 amounting to $20.7m.

Timely delivery

Pizza giant Domino’s has told its shareholders it is following the advice of health authorities in its nine countries of operation to ensure its stores can continue to deliver meals to customers during these uncertain times.

Domino’s is preparing to move to 100 per cent “zero contact” ordering, managing director Don Meij advised. No word on whether they can guarantee all their popular toppings.

Meanwhile, the US-headquartered online food delivery service DoorDash appears to have timed its move into Australia well amid the COVID-19 crisis engulfing the capital cities. The San Francisco-founded company launched in Melbourne last September, opening operations in Sydney two months later. Now there’s an ever-expanding hunger for home delivery, with thousands of self-isolators being told to work, eat and pray remotely amid emptying supermarket shelves.

DoorDash, which dominates the on-demand food delivery service market in the US, let their customers know they’ve also launched a no-contact delivery option, where riders leave the food in a safe place and alert the customer on its delivery.

Their DoorDash store for their delivery workforce features a special COVID-19 special products section with sanitisers and disposable gloves available free of charge.

Deliveroo, which also set in motion no-contact deliveries, has launched a fund for their employees to financially support riders who aren’t able to work if they have coronavirus.

Careful Care

Our voice in the Italian parliament, the former longtime Sydney Italian Chamber of Commerce & Industry boss Nicholas Care, is safely back home.

Care got out just before the lockdown in Italy, and has secluded himself for 14 days at the Southern Highlands home he shares with wife, style queen Melissa Penfold.

On touchdown in Sydney two weekends ago, authorities took his temperature, which was normal, asked a few questions, then sent him home with a sheet of instructions for the self-quarantine.

Penfold, who has a global reputation as an influential tastemaker, writer and trendsetter, also self-isolated herself to be prudent, all the while keeping her 147,000 Instagram followers up to date with the latest style trends for the pandemic.

“Despite home quarantine being challenging — especially if you have young children or live in cramped quarters with flat mates — it’s a great time to nurture yourself, your life and family.

“A chance to cut back on the treadmill of frenetic activity.

“There are practical, logistic challenges and gaps in the official advice that make it tricky,” Penfold adds.

Care, who’s also been tested at St Vincent’s Hospital with a negative reading, had been attending parliament in Rome daily.

He’s not expecting to be heading back for a while, but does hope to attend a family wedding this weekend in Victoria’s Yarra Valley.

He represents Italian expatriates from Oceania, Africa, Asia and the Antarctic in the parliamentary chamber of deputies.

Polo paralysis

It was the rain rather than virus fears that triggered the weekend cancellation of the polo tournament out at Sydney’s Windsor at the weekend, which would have seen likes of Wal Ashton, property developer Jason Varker-Miles, Georgia Higgins, Rob Archibald and Shane Finemore ride.

But now the entire Easter polo season has been shut down completely given the coronavirus, including the 112th Polo International between Australia and England. It’s not the horses in quarantine but any polo player now landing in Sydney.

No silly rumours that any of the royals were coming, but English skipper and their best player James Harper was set to play next month along with son Will, one of England’s most promising young talents. James often plays alongside Scone’s David Paradice. Windsor Polo Club president Rowena Rainger advised the cancellation to ticket holders, who were paying up to $950.

This week’s Garangula Polo Club tournament down in southern NSW at Harden won’t go ahead either. It is the one hosted by the Schwarzenbach family.

Guy Schwarzenbach, the son of Urs Schwarzenbach, the Swiss-born financier, and his Australian wife Francesca, traditionally hosts the world-class event.

Urs, the son of a print shop owner, made his fortune from foreign exchange trading after founding his own company Intex Exchange.

They spent more than $35m on acquisitions mostly between Harden and Jugiong since 1987, including Redbank, the homestead briefly owned by impresario Robert Satinwood, who bought the property while in Australia attending the premiere of the movie Gallipoli. Redbank did host Prince Harry as a jackaroo in 2003.

The showpiece polo-playing estate Garangula has a private art gallery designed by Fender Katsalidis Mirams Architects that cost $24m to construct.

Margin Call recalls it was Schwarzenbach who called the intensive-care ambulance that saved Kerry Packer from his heart attack while playing polo in 1990, dramatically portrayed in the recent Belvoir St Theatre play, Packer & Sons.

Urs Schwarzenbach has been facing tax claims back home over his art work importation into Zurich.

Switzerland’s Federal Supreme Court recently dismissed several of Schwarzenbach’s objections.