Chris Morris aims for $5.95m for Main Beach abode
Melbourne-based billionaire Chris Morris is seeking $5.95m buyers for his luxury Main Beach holiday apartment.
Melbourne-based billionaire Chris Morris is seeking $5.95m buyers for his luxury Main Beach holiday apartment.
The three-level beachfront garden apartment cost $5.35m six years ago.
Spanning 710sq m, the apartment is one of five in the exclusive Ocean Isles complex that has attracted the likes of Keith Lloyd, Trevor Wanless and former US Nevada senator William Hernstadt as owners over the past three decades.
Competing Bids recalls its construction was interrupted by the early 1990s recession when development funds from Farrow Corporation stopped coming.
Kollosche Prestige agents Michael Kollosche and Duncan Longmore have the listing.
The last Ocean Isles sale saw hoteliers Tony Burnett and Toni Ferguson secure $6.52m last November and another has just gone under offer after being listed by Amir Prestige at $5.1m.
Morris, the boss of hospitality and tourism operator Colonial Leisure Group who made his fortune through Computershare, and wife Sharron Sills recently offloaded their Latitude, Milsons Point penthouse as they relocate their Sydney bolthole to a nearby $10.75m Maritima, Lavender Bay waterfront acquisition.
Capital success
Just a trickle of capital city auctions given the Easter break, but realestate.com.au calculated Canberra scored a 100 per cent success rate from its 38 offerings.
Its weekend results included a $1.08m sale of a five-bedroom, two-bathroom 1992-built house at Palmerston. It sold through Hugo Mendez at Hugo Canberra. It had been the vendor’s family home for 28 years. The home sat on a 722sq m Aggie Place block with a $417,000 unimproved value incurring $2916 annual rates or land tax of $4443 per year.
$5m for penthouse
Sydney, with a 96 per cent success rate, had the priciest advised auction sale when $5.01m was paid for a Mosman penthouse. The Moruben Road penthouse sold last in 2004 at $2.05m. It first traded in 2002 on completion at $1.85m. Selling agent Jonathon De Brennan marketed the three-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment as the “jewel in a prestigious boutique complex” of six. It came with Middle Harbour views from its Balmoral Slopes vantage point.
The tightly held block’s last sale was $2.7m in 2016. The neighbouring penthouse last traded at $1,805,000 in 2003.
Seachange surge
Melbourne secured an 87 per cent success rate, with most of the Easter action on holiday and sea-change opportunities.
Especially along the Mornington Peninsula, where Saturday saw a $1.82m sale at Rye when a three-bedroom Grange Road house was sold. Its price guide had been $1,295,000-$1,420,000.
At St Andrews Beach, a three-bedroom home secured a $1.67m result, some $180,000 above reserve through Ray White agent Prue Jones, who had three auction bidders.
The price guide had been $1,390,000-$1,490,000.
Custom built in 2006, and initially used as a holiday retreat, it was set 10 minutes walk to the ocean beaches.
Good Friday saw the notification of a $3.5m Mount Martha sale.
And Sunday saw Kay & Burton Portsea agent Liz Jensen sell bathing box 41 on the Blairgowrie foreshore at onsite auction, complete with Easter egg hunt. The vendors had enjoyed 25 years ownership. It fetched $306,000, having had $340,000 expectations.
Port Hughes berth
School holidays across the nation will keep suburban listings at reduced levels, but still ticking over at coastal locations.
South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula has an April 17 auction of a seafront home at Port Hughes, about 135km northwest of Adelaide.
The 2009-built Richards Terrace, overlooking the Port Hughes and Moonta Bay jetties, has its open-plan living space on its upper level along with its kitchen, and two of its four bedrooms.
The lower level comes with two garages, one for the car and one for the boat.
Michael Window and Chris Wardle at NYP Real Estate are suggesting it will see high $900,000 bids. They advise its rental potential as $400 per night.
Port Hughes’s median house price sits at $439,000, according to realestate.com.au, based on 22 sales.
Island home
Retired architect Thomas Marshall has listed his two-storey Phillip Island home. The home sits on 2440sq m in Cowes bushland. Its elevated position offers extensive views of Westernport Bay from the living areas, master bedroom, veranda and sundeck. Offers close on April 30 through Bec Anderson at Ray White who has a $2.75m-$2.95m guide.
Mountains high
Of course not everyone desires the sea. Bryn Mawr, the Mount Wilson, Blue Mountains garden estate, has been sold for $2m through Martin Schoeddert at Iris Property after four decades of ownership by the Lawrence family.
“The owners transformed this bracken-covered paddock into one of the Mounts’ most desirable holdings,” Schoeddert said.
Its 14ha grounds come with about 4ha of garden and the rest old-growth eucalypt and native rainforest.
The first plantings started in 1980, including its swath of 10,000 bluebells, thousands of daffodils, a stone fruit orchard and truffle oaks.
Byron estate sells
Longtime developer Eric Freeman has secured the sale of his Byron hinterland Ewingsdale estate Ahana for $8.45m after the grand 4ha estate spent about three months on the market.
Freeman has had the hinterland estate since the early 1990s and built the current four-bedroom home in 2007 complete with sunken lounge with fireplace. There is a cabana by the infinity pool.
Byron Bay Real Estate Agency’s Peter Yopp and Tony Farrell had the listing along with Jeremy Bennett at Byron Bay Property Sales. Freeman’s projects included the up-market Tuckeroo Beach coastal subdivision in the late 1990s.
Farm high hopes
The price guidance for Musk Farm, near Victoria’s Daylesford, has been released with Mike Wagner and his psychologist wife Cathy seeking between $3.4m and $3.5m.
Originally a Victorian primary school, Musk Farm was redesigned in the late 1990s by the late interior designer Stuart Rattle, whose executors sold the 9600sq m retreat for $1.59m in 2014. It followed Rattle’s 2013 murder at his city apartment by his partner of 16 years, Michael O’Neill, who was jailed in 2015 for a minimum of 13 years.
It sold again in 2017 at $2.41m.
Belle Property Daylesford agent Annette Leary, who advises it is a reluctant listing, has had 4000 online views since starting the realestate.com.au marketing.
Musk Farm sits amid gardens by Paul Bangay with 15 garden rooms based on a cross axis organisation of great French and English gardens. The rooms have been cared for by the Wagners, who were novice gardeners when they took over four years ago.
The retreat was featured last year in House & Garden, and Robyn Powell from Ross Garden Tours got in her last tour group last month.
The studio accommodation within the grounds was available for rental at $695 a weekend. The studio space had been the school shelter shed. It later became Rattle’s summer house, which was extended to accommodate a studio-office from where he could run his interior design business.
The school operated between 1871 and 1968.
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