Antony Catalano set to cash in on Melbourne’s prestige resurgence

There has been a conga line of estate agents invited to appraise Antony Catalano’s soon-to-be-redundant St Kilda West home base.

There’s no mistaking the quirky Giraffe Manor in Teneriffe, Brisbane.

Antony Catalano, the owner of the belle of Australia’s bohemian beach resorts, Raes on Wategos, is set to capitalise on the prestige Melbourne residential market resurgence.

There’s been a conga line of estate agents invited to appraise his soon-to-be-redundant St Kilda West home base.

We hear the well-connected former CEO of Domain Group, who now heads Australian Community Media, is torn with difficulty selecting the listing agent.

He’s readying the striking Beaconsfield Parade terrace for delayed settlement marketing, as he plans his 2022 move into the penthouse at the nearby Saint Moritz project.

The terrace has been the home of Catalano and his wife, Stefanie, for most of the past decade, during which valuations on the promenade beachfront strip have soared given an inland $11.7m home sale early last year.

Antony Catalano at his St Kilda home. Picture: Stuart McEvoy

“The Cat” continues to split his time between Melbourne and Byron Bay where he’s set to oversee the expansion of his heavily booked holiday and dining destination.

He’s just snapped up a 4230sq m vacant building block at the other end of the dress circle strip with plans being formulated to build luxury residential accommodation.

He’s told his architects he wants a “Little Nell Residences Aspen-style set-up that bookends the beach”.

The hillside site was flipped off-market by developer David Cullen, who secured the site from its long-time owners, the Bundjalung Of Byron Bay Aboriginal Corporation (Arakwal).

Catalano is whispered to have paid $24m-plus, which exceeds the strip’s most recent settled sale when headhunter Geoff Morgan sold the neighbouring 664sq m property for $22m to Rip Curl founder Brian Singer.

Catalano had long expressed frustration with the existing white Spanish mission-style premises having just seven accommodation rooms on its 1155sq m Marine Parade site.

Raes, the creation of Vincent Rae, has been a celebrity hangout since the late 1980s, securing anywhere between $650 for a standard Tamsin Johnson-designed room to $3450 a night for a penthouse, from the likes of Keith Richards, Elle Macpherson and Nicole Kidman.

Buyer urgency

Amid the Saturday rain, there was an undisclosed prestige Brighton sale. Listed with ambitious $8m to $8.8m hopes, the four-bedroom home was sold post-auction through Marshall White after bidding began with a $7.85m vendor bid.

26 St Ninians Road, Brighton.

The onsite cul-de-sac auction then saw the auctioneer accept a $7.5m offer for 26 St Ninians which was being offered by the Burgess family, who’ve been in residence since 1928.

After soaring success rates, Melbourne buyers agent Mal James noted “there is simply way too much urgent buyer sentiment in the market right now, for things to cool quickly”.

“Stock levels are a big factor and while more stock or world events may ease things after Easter, right now the market is on fire,” he suggested, with some qualifications.

James advised two $20m sales had taken place last week, so “all markets may be in for a strong, pre-Easter period”.

James said the new crop of cashed-up buyers was not waiting and “the pile-in, particularly in the $2m to $6m range, is causing a major demand/supply imbalance, leading to significant price increases”.

Melbourne was host to 1061 weekend auctions, down on this time last year’s 1248 homes.

Of the 908 results collected so far by CoreLogic, 82 per cent were successful, a small dip from last week’s preliminary rate of 87 per cent, which revised down to 70 per cent at final figures given the five-day lockdown withdrawal rate.

Mansion fetches $8.5m

In Sydney, 769 homes were taken to auction, compared with 963 this time last year. The preliminary clearance rate came in at 88 per cent.

“It is likely that Sydney’s final auction clearance rate will come in above 80 per cent for the third consecutive week,” Tim Lawless at CoreLogic suggested.

Sydney had the nation’s highest declared sale in Elizabeth Bay, when a freestanding Queen Anne revival-style mansion on 512sq m sold for $8.5m. The property, offered by the bankruptcy trustee, last traded for $2.9m in 2001.

The four underbidders included local property developer Theo Onisforou.

84 Elizabeth Bay Road, Elizabeth Bay, Sydney.

The six-bedroom Keadue was built on Elizabeth Bay Road in the 1890s for the Hughes family, who owned the nearby Kincoppal estate.

The three-storey brick house was designed by architect John Bede Barlow. The last Bede Barlow-designed home to sell in the neighbourhood was pre-Christmas when Amber Symond, the wife of mortgage broker John Symond spent $12.5m on Potts Point heritage mansion Killountan.

The 1892 Challis Avenue house, set to be restored as a private investment residence, was designed for Bede Barlow’s cousin, the Toohey’s director, John Lane-Mullins, whose wife was the sister of Sydney’s first Lord Mayor, John Hughes.

Killountan’s vendor, Keith Wherry and his wife, Marie Harland, have since upgraded within the nearby Pomeroy complex on Macleay Street paying $6.5m. Their redundant unit has been snapped up off market for $4,295,000 by Lisa Keighery, the widow of fashion designer Mark Keighery, who sold her $16m Palm Beach beachfront over summer to Bruce Corlett, the former director of Servcorp.

Capital clears at 92pc

Across the smaller cities, Canberra recorded the highest weekend preliminary clearance rate at 92 per cent, followed by Adelaide on 85 per cent, which included the nation’s cheapest auction result.

3 Vincent Crescent, Morphett Vale.

It was $321,000 for a three-bedroom home on a 960sq m Morphett Vale block. There had been a $270,000 price guide from its LJ Hooker agent Michael Anderson who had marketed the home as a “renovator’s delight”.

The mid-1970s home had extensive timber panelling.

Morphett Vale, the suburb in southern Adelaide, has seen a compound growth rate of 2 per cent for houses over the past five years, according to realestate.com.au.

Auctions ramp up

The national auction volume sits around 20 per cent down over the same time last year, when 2517 homes were taken to pre-pandemic auction with 72 per cent sold.

Across the capital cities some 2094 homes went to auction last week, up from 1496 over the previous week. Of the 1754 results collected so far by CoreLogic, 84 per cent have reported a successful result.

“Auction markets are set to be tested on larger volumes next week, with CoreLogic tracking close to 2500 capital city auctions scheduled to be held,” Lawlessadded.

Whitlam home sells

Less than 24 hours before its scheduled weekend auction, the modest Cabramatta brick home once owned by prime minister Gough Whitlam and wife Margaret was sold to the Whitlam Heritage Home Fund foundation for $1.15m.

The intact home at 32 Albert Street, will become a museum run by former NSW premier Barrie Unsworth, NSW Labor president Mark Lennon, and the Whitlam family siblings. It was the family home from the mid-1950s until 1978, and was offered for the first time since its $154,000 sale in 1990.

Over in the Sutherland Shire Liberal MP Craig Kelly and his wife Vicki sold their bushland reserve home for $1,651,000. There were three keen bidders with muffins supplied for the 70 or so unmasked attendees.

And despite the trend of lengthened delays in securing home loans approvals, the Centennial Park-bound Liberal MP for Wentworth, Dave Sharma, secured a bullish $3.15m for his Paddington terrace, which was listed with $2.8m hopes for an early March auction.

37 Macquarie Street, Teneriffe, Brisbane.

Manor’s tall order

The quirky Giraffe Manor residence in Brisbane’s Teneriffe is under offer. Competing Bids gleans the negotiations secured an agreed $5.7m sale price.

It’s the home with a 2.7m giraffe statute out the front at 37 Macquarie Street which Ray White last sold for $5.1m in 2017.

The three-level home on 614sq m has four bedrooms, with Brisbane River views from its 434sq m internal layout.

Seven years ago, a joke about the home’s zoo-like lawn enclosure resulted in the landscaper delivering a truckload of fake animals. It remains to be seen if they all stay.