Billionaire Chau Chak Wing buys Packer mansion for record $70m

Australian-Chinese tycoon Chau Chak Wing paid a record $70m for James Packer’s Sydney estate, it has emerged.

The Packer sale sets an Australian property record.

Australian-Chinese businessman Chau Chak Wing has demonstrated the same financial acumen that plonked him on China’s Forbes list to storm into Australia’s most prestigious residential address, snapping up James and Erica Packer’s Sydney property for about $70 million.

“We can confirm that the Chau family has decided to move from the family home in Hunters Hill to Vaucluse and has accordingly agreed to purchase the Packers’ house,” the family said in a statement.

Property executives believe the sale price roughly equals the amount Mr Packer poured into creating the palatial spread.

“To build this, they’ve put together multiple parcels of land on top of an original parcel of land (that) was exceptional anyway. The price, the time it’s taken to amalgamate, to get council approval ... it looks like a good deal for whoever bought the home,” valuer Simon Feilich said.

The Packers spent roughly $30.5m amassing the hillside estate in three lots over two years. They paid $18m for the Guilford Bell-designed residence on Wentworth Road in June 2009, before adding another 985sq m to the title in two successive transactions valued at $12m the next year.

Build costs on the renovation by Tzannes Architects have been estimated by some outlets to have spiralled to as high as $40m, adding to a possible total investment of $70.5m in the property. All this for a house that, according to sources close to the site, was “barely” lived in by the Packers and their three children.

The sale, negotiated by Christie’s International agent Ken Jacobs and Sotheby’s agent Michael Pallier, helps Sydney reclaim the mantle for the country’s most expensive home, which for the past six years has been held by Perth mining entrepreneur Chris Ellison’s $57.7m Mosman Park waterfront property.

In the same way Mosman Park catapulted Mr Ellison into common lore, the Vaucluse transaction is likely to do the same for Dr Chau.

A figure in high standing with the Chinese ruling party, he has hosted the likes of former prime ministers Kevin Rudd, John Howard and Bob Hawke at his compound near Guangzhou city in southwest China and has been a prominent Australian political donor. Dr Chau enjoyed a relatively low profile until his $20m donation to the University of Technology, Sydney, lured international “starchitect” Frank Gehry to design a new wing at the campus.

However, the purchase heralds his ultimate transition from long-time intimate of Australian foreign ministers and politicians to a prominent member of the country’s elite.

“This is, in its simplest form, a trophy property,” Mr Feilich said. “The buyer would have known from the outset that buying this property — something belonging to James Packer — wouldn’t be like moving into some quiet
cul-de-sac.”

The six-bedroom home is regarded as a bona fide estate in a city where few exist, but pales in comparison with the scale of the Imperial Springs private retreat Dr Chau built for himself and select friends in China.

Built in the same mountainside locale where Mao Zedong went to recuperate, the invitation-only compound with a 27-hole golf course, a major museum of Chinese antiquities and a 36-room presidential suite for visiting heads of state is reported to have cost more than $US1.2 billion in construction and acquisition costs alone.