Collette Dinnigan loses clifftop home to Batemans blaze

Acclaimed fashion and interior designer Collette Dinnigan’s retreat near Batemans Bay was incinerated on New Year’s Eve.

Sam Burgess and estranged wife Phoebe’s former Maroubra home

Acclaimed fashion and interior designer Collette Dinnigan’s retreat at Rosedale near Batemans Bay was incinerated on New Year’s Eve along with most of the rest of the houses in the clifftop Yowani Road. Selling agent John Haslem of Elders, the former member for the House of Representatives seat of Canberra from 1975 to 1980, also lost his home in Batemans Bay. Haslem sold Dinnigan the two-bedroom Rosedale cottage in 2018 for a hefty $950,000. “Except for three houses the whole clifftop of North Rosedale was incinerated,” Haslem told The Weekend Australian. Dinnigan had renovated the two-bedroom cottage and was renting it out. Dinnigan and her hotelier husband, Bradley Cocks, are in Europe and could not be reached for comment. The pair have amassed a sizeable real estate portfolio south of Sydney but recently lost money in a deal on scenic Milton through now jailed real estate agent Nicolette van Wijngaarden. Van Wijngaarden was jailed in November for the largest trust account fraud in NSW history.

Seymour cans Solace

Veteran Queensland developer Kevin Seymour may have snared two genuine apartment buyers for his upmarket Solace residential development on the Gold Coast but he has decided to shelve it. The Rich Lister says he had two buyers at $3.5m apiece for two of the nine luxury full-floor apartments he proposed but he says returns are higher in Brisbane. “I didn’t have the patience for it when there are far more buyers in Brisbane than the Gold Coast,” Seymour told The Weekend Australian. He has collected three riverfront sites in the upmarket Brisbane suburb of New Farm and a commercial site in Fortitude Valley. He also is doing a residential development in Port Douglas and has his eye on a hotel in Airlie Beach. Seymour has put the 2 First Avenue, Broadbeach, site he bought for $6m in March 2018 back on the market.

Burgesses exit for $5m

Retired football star Sam Burgess and his estranged wife Phoebe have sold their matrimonial home in Lurline Street, Maroubra, for just on $5m, having bought it for $3.8m back in January 2016. The French provincial style house in one of Lurline Bay’s most exclusive streets sold on Christmas Eve through Josh Ellison of Ellison Zulian Property, according to CoreLogic data. Built in 2003, the house has four bedrooms and is built across a 427sq m block. The buyer grew up in Sydney’s eastern suburbs and is now based in Britain. Ellison declined to comment on the deal.

Thorpe out of pub

Publican and former Australian Hotels Association NSW president John Thorpe and partner Trish King have just reaped $30m from the sale of their Harbord Beach Hotel in the Sydney suburb of Freshwater. Thorpe and King had lived atop the 1928-built pub since they purchased it in 1978. The syndicate of locals who now own the Harbord Beach Hotel including local property entrepreneur Glenn Piper have plans to convert Thorpe and King’s former home into another bar. Thorpe and King are expected to reside in their other property in Sydney’s Queenscliff and at Labrador on the Gold Coast.