Billionaire Scott Farquhar claims most expensive property sale of 2022 with $130m Point Piper buy
An eleventh-hour purchase by billionaire Scott Farquhar saw Sydney beat Melbourne in the race for 2022’s priciest property sale.
A stellar eleventh-hour deal has helped Sydney again beat Melbourne in the race for 2022’s priciest home sale. The $130m sale of the historic Point Piper trophy home, Uig Lodge, to tech billionaire Scott Farquhar and his wife, investment banker Kim Jackson, easily exceeded two pricey mid-year sales in Toorak.
The top 10 house sales across the capital cities last year tallied $640m, with a $38.5m cut-off price for entry.
The tally was well up on the $395m total in 2021 when there was a $35m cut-off. It was $392m in 2020 with a $24.5m cut-off, a year hampered by the arrival of the pandemic.
In 2019 there had been a $291m tally from the 10 top national sales, with a $22m cut-off.
Historic mansion
Uig Lodge was built in the style of a Scottish baronial castle at the turn of last century, close to the highest point on the Point Piper peninsula, by Lachlan Beaton, a Hebrides-born businessman.
He had bought the trig point building block in 1901 for £3925, with a £2500 AMP mortgage. Beaton’s company directorships included Clyde Brick Co, Sydney Hydraulic Power Co and The Vale of Clwydd Coal Mining Co. He was a founding member of Royal Sydney Golf Club.
Uig Lodge first sold for £5650 in 1916 to Dr Alexander Rutherford and wife Marcia, of the Cobb & Co coach family, who sold in 1956 for £27,500.
After the site was subdivided, the house on its windy 3300sq m was sold to the newspaper baron Ezra Norton, owner of The Daily Mirror, for $200,000 in 1968. Norton sold it in 1976 for $500,000 to the Estonian-born steel pipe manufacturer Aldur Kaljo.
Uig Lodge was sold shortly before Christmas by rag traders Steven and Carol Moss, of the Katies fashion empire, whose purchase had set a $9.2m non-waterfront record in 1996.
Competing Bids recalls the house had plenty of boulle – much of it bought from Emannuel Margolin’s late 1970s clearance sale at Barford, Bellevue Hill. Uig then had a three-year renovation by architect Stephen Gergely, with New York architect Alan Wanzenburg installing modern Westchester-style interiors.
Farquhar, co-founder of the software giant Atlassian, had only recently been advised he needed to vacate his current family rental, Barford by Easter, as his landlord Ian Joye and wife Maggie are set to resume residency.
The advisory prompted the family to turn their attention to purchasing possibilities on Point Piper. The Farquhar family had spent $71m on Elaine, on Seven Shillings Beach, Double Bay, in 2017, but their plans for a striking home on the 7000sq m lot were pulled after lodgement in 2020. The proposed rooftop tennis court did not go down well in the neighbourhood.
The Uig sale settlement details will reveal how much it topped the current national $100m house price record set in 2018 by the Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes for another Fairfax media family property, the 1.1ha estate Fairwater.
Melbourne’s marvels
Melbourne took second place with the $80m sale of Toorak’s so-called ghost mansion – formerly two estates, Cantala and Somerset – to 27-year-old online casino millionaire Edward Craven, the son of former Spedley Securities director Jamie Craven.
It covers 7187sq m on St Georges Rd. Craven’s mortgage-free purchase easily exceeded the previous Melbourne record, set in 2018 when art dealer Rod Menzies sold Stonnington, the state’s former government house in the neighbouring suburb of Malvern, for $52.5m. Stonnington’s sale ranked as the year’s third priciest national house sale, behind Fairwater and Rona on Bellevue Hill.
Craven’s purchase almost doubled the Toorak record price of $43.1m, set when Chemist Warehouse’s Sam Gance bought a Lansell Rd mansion in 2021.
In third spot nationally was the $74.5m sale of nearby 1936 Blair House to Grant Rule, founder of SMS marketing technology company MessageMedia. The purchase of the 1936 Georgian Revival residence came after the entrepreneur sold the firm to Swedish rival Sinch for $1.7bn in mid-2021. There was Westpac financing in the pre-Christmas settlement paperwork.
With Charter Keck Cramer appointed as transaction adviser, Blair House was sold by the Nanut family after a family feud in the Victorian Supreme Court. The
7854sq m estate had last been sold for $9m by the executors of the estate of Dame Hilda Stevenson, the philanthropic heiress to the Sunshine Harvester fortune in the early 1990s.
Brisbane’s best
There was no Brisbane house on any of the recent top 10 national sale lists – its all-time record price for a home was the $18,488,888 paid in 2016 for a Leopard St, Kangaroo Point trophy home. The Zhang family went on to sell at a loss for $15m in 2021 to Broncos chairman Karl Morris and wife Louise.
The previous Brisbane sale record of $14m was set when Gina Rinehart bought in Hawthorne in 2014. It was recently rumoured to be hitting the market, with Courier Mail columnist Des Houghton writing last month that a Victorian family was keen to own the house, which comes with a jetty, boat shed and caretaker’s cottage.
Brisbane’s priciest sale last year was its so-called Gucci mansion, a decadent riverfront at East Brisbane that fetched $12.5m through Michael Bacon of Place Estate Agents. The five bedroom, six bathroom, four car garage Laidlaw Pde home crafted by interior designer Greg Natale sold to Lisette Seery.
Surgeons eye a bargain
Last year a riverfront Applecross property – outside Perth’s so-called Golden Triangle – was the city’s most expensive residential sale. The Majestic Close home, in Perth’s southern suburbs, was bought by eye surgeons Tze Lai and Johnny Wu for $19.5m. The three-level home sits on 2508sq m with 38m of river frontage on the former Majestic Hotel site. The next priciest sale came when Liontown Resources chair Timothy Goyder bought a heritage home at Peppermint Grove with a similar 38m of river frontage for $17m.
In 2009 Perth’s top residential deal led the nation: the $57.5m Mosman Park sale by billionaire mining heiress Angela Bennett to Mineral Resources chief Chris Ellison and wife Tia. The compound included three buildings, tennis court and jetty. The top sale in 2009 on the other side of the nation was the $23m sale of Le Manoir by the French government in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis.
Adelaide bluestone
Adelaide’s top ten, which all sold for more than $5.5m, was topped by a six-bedroom 1885-built home on Robe Tce, Medindie that fetched $9.25m through Williams Luxury Property agent Stephanie Williams. Title records show it was sold to Brenton Jordan, whose car parts manufacturer Australian Clutch Services – set up in a tin shed in Torrensville in the late 1980s – was sold to the ASX-listed GUD Holdings for $32m in 2021. The grand bluestone Victorian home sits on a 3981sq m lot. It last sold unrestored in 2007 for $2,405,000.
Riviera record
Domi Riviera, a three-home compound on 1.04ha at Howrah Point, fetched a record-breaking $8.533m. Set a 15 minute drive from the Hobart CBD, it was offered by the executors of June Harris, the widow of Hedley Harris, whose Nubake business merged with Cripps Bakery in the 1990s. It was sold by Knight Frank agent Brad Stephens to Sydney cardiologist Joseph Matthews and his wife, Dr Yasmin Renwick who then sold off a 1661sq m portion of the beachfront land in November.
They also sold a property on Shackel Ave, Clovelly for $9.2m earlier last year through McGrath Estate Agents.
Tasmania’s next priciest sale came when the executors of Boyne Russell, the former Melbourne physician best known for her work in geriatric medicine, sold at Battery Point for $5.45m. The Clarke Ave riverfront was sold in 10 days by Rob Henry at Harcourts, who’d given $5m-plus hopes, It had last traded in 1988 at $360,000. It was bought by a descendant of Neale Edwards, whose company developed interests in the agricultural sector following its 1931 establishment.
Deakin dream
A $9m Deakin home was the top sale in Canberra, two years after hitting the market. The five-bedroom home – which won the Master Builders 2000 ACT House of the Year award – ranks as the highest sale ever in the ACT. It was sold by veteran developer Eric Koundouris, the founder of Supabarn Supermarkets, who bought the 2800sq m block in 1999 for $900,000. The Empire Circuit house sold through Bill Lyristakis of Berkely Residential, who’d set the capital’s previous record in 2020 at $8m on Mugga Way, Red Hill.
Darwin diamond
The Northern Territory’s top sale, according to the NT News, came when a jaw-dropping $8.5m was paid for a mansion overlooking Fannie Bay. It’s on East Point Road on Darwin’s Golden Mile.
It was sold through Chris Hyland and Lianna Tsounias at Colliers by commercial property developers Michael and Rosanna Spadaccini. They had built after paying $980,000 in 2003. It was bought by Simon Donnelly of Northern Transportables which specialises in the manufacture of transportable accommodation, and his wife, Cherie.
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