Garbo turned yacht broker Ian Malouf dumps $40m in Palm Beach
The cashed-up garbo turned yacht broker Ian Malouf has smashed the residential price record at Sydney’s pricey summer playground, Palm Beach.
The cashed-up garbo turned yacht broker Ian Malouf has smashed the residential price record at Sydney’s pricey summer playground, Palm Beach.
He has spent around $40m on the luxury beachfront home Anakela, overlooking Pittwater, which will be a getaway for Malouf, wife Larissa and their five children Jack, Max, Ed, Lara and Ellie.
The Iluka Rd house on a double-fronted 1948sq m block is the latest in Malouf’s $200m spending spree, topped by his $60m purchase of the ANZ penthouseon Sydney’s Castlereagh St in May last year.
Malouf, who sold his Dial-a-Dump business to Bingo Industries in a $577m cash and shares deal in 2018, now owns three houses on Iluka Rd. His nearby 600sq m acquisitions cost $20m and $18.6m over the past 20 months, including the retreat of the late bond dealer John McNiven.
Anakela was bought last week off-market from the Uncle Tobys breakfast cereal company founder Doug Shears, who has been a director at ICM Australia since 1975.
The agrifood entrepreneur, who was also the longtime owner of Australia’s biggest juice maker Berri Ltd, had purchased the home for a record $15m in 2007.
Shears bought from the late Jewel Food Stores tycoon Jim Fleming and his wife Angela, who’d paid a record $3.65m in 1995. The recent record price for a Palm Beach beachfront is three doors away, where $27m was paid in 2021 by the hospitality entrepreneur John Szangolies for the double-fronted holding of Virginia Nelson, widow of the wholesale tobacco tycoon, Arthur Nelson.
On the Ocean Rd beachfront, the priciest sale was just before the pandemic in February 2020 when Caledonia co-chief investment officer Mike Messara paid $24m for the Chisholm family home Melaleuca.
The suburb’s record has briefly been a hilltop, when $27.5m was paid in June on Pacific Rd by Richard White, the WiseTech Global software billionaire.
The Flemings built Anakela after its design by Walter Bardawith a second-floor see-through glass bathtub suspended above the ground-floor living area.
It was 1981 when the late Kerry Packer broke through the suburb’s million-dollar threshold with his $1m purchase from the MacCormick family. As Competing Bids has previously noted, a polo practice horse on the porch and a pianola in the parlour were the raciest accoutrements at the Packer family bungalow.
Expect to see Malouf’s luxury boat Mischief increasingly present on both Pittwater and Sydney Harbour this summer.
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No sale for Bellona
Bellona, the dress circle Palm Beach home overlooking the ocean, remains for sale through Ken Jacobs at Forbes Global Properties.
The Ocean Rd house was listed mid-September by the Elizabeth Bay-based property developers Bob and Margaret Rose, who built the three storey bungalow after they paid $6.3m in 2002 for the demolished holding of the Forsyth family, descendants of the Dymocks Books founders who’d paid £158 in 1918.
The lack of a sale means the weekender ticks over to land tax liability for 2023 at midnight on December 31, providing it’s not their principal place of residence.
The 1296sq m property’s last valuation was $9,720,000 as at July 2021, with its 2022 issuance due early next year. The valuation was $7.4m in 2020 and $7.14m in 2019, which with three-year averaging sits at $8.08m, incurring a $128,000 tax bill.
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Celeste seeking $65m
The northern beaches’ top asking price sits with Celeste, the deep waterfront on Stokes Point at Avalon Beach. David Edwards of LJ Hooker kicked off the marketing in November with the advisory that buying the land and rebuilding Celeste would cost $50m and take four years.
His commentary prompted feature articles on its $50m hopes, but it’s actually $65m according to the Instagram portal, Million Dollar Listings Sydney.
Builder Robert Yazbek and wife Annette bought the 1631sq m estate in 2017 for $12,995,000 and commissioned architect Robert Burton to redesign the three-level property with its six bedrooms and seven bathrooms.
In the meantime the property is tied up in the five-year legal battle between Yazbek’s Atlas Construction Group and developer Fitz Jersey, a company controlled by billionaire Fortescue Metals investor Kie Chie Wong.
The dispute is over a $9m judgment debt arising from the construction costs of a 515-apartment Botany Rd, Mascot complex. NSW Supreme Court Justice Kelly Rees stayed Yazbek’s judgment debt in a mid-December hearing, provided he lodges security ahead of his five day appeal scheduled for March. The property is among the security for his recent $99m loan facilities.
Having been told the family had assets totalling $110,307,586, her honour anticipated the Yazbeks have some cash at their disposal, but “may need a little more time to find the balance”.
Rees ordered the security to be lodged with the court in two instalments: $4m by 4pm, December 30; and $4,518,396 by 4pm, January 17 next year, “failing which the stay is lifted”.
The hearing was told by Yazbek that he’d discovered “forged signatures” over the past year as he prepared his appeal paperwork.
“Mr Yazbek declared himself to be shocked, although it was probably his legal team who was more surprised, as the suggestion of forgery was not mentioned in his affidavit or the compendious correspondence,” Rees noted.
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Work goes on
There were maintenance teams and tradies everywhere on the pricey peninsula on Friday morning, with last-minute chores before the owners turned up for the season.
The new waterfront home of John Balderstone, who once headed the Australian office of the world’s biggest hedge fund, Tudor Investment Corp, and his Dirty Deeds filmmaker wife Deborah was getting its finishing touches.
Trades galore too at the Whale Beach retreat of Julie Trethowan, the former Hyde Park gym operator, who sold her $22.5m Toft Monks, Elizabeth Bay apartment to Bob and Margaret Rose and bought into One Barangaroo Crown Residences for $24m.
Just the solitary tradie at the Whale Beach construction site of the Shaun Lockyer-designed weekender of Robert Nugan, chairman of Fresh Produce Group of Australia, and his wife Susie.
There was an early holiday start for the workers at the shut-up Whale Beach clifftop site of Jake Wall and Jennifer Hawkins, who this time last year onsold the building project to a mystery $30m buyer, whose identity will be revealed when the vast trophy home is completed.
But no Friday off for the workers at the Palm Beach home of Gretel Pinniger, aka Madame Lash, the eccentric dominatrix.
An inclinator is being installed at her historic Florida House.
There will five stops from the street to a new second abode at the top of the 1250sq m block that she bought for $720,000 from greengrocers David and Cathy Harris way back in 1990.
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Prices hold up
It seems 2022 was not the year for bankers, chief executives or financial industry operatives to be buying homes for play or even to work from home. The mindset was accompanied by contentment among owners, with a paucity of vendors, so prices could be preserved. There was just a 3 per cent decline in Palm Beach’s $5,175,000 median.
There are currently only 12 houses for sale on realestate.com.au, with an average 94 days on market – if you take out the longest listing by stockbroker Brent Potts and his wife Paula. Their 2003-built Florida Rd home designed by architect Rolf Haefeli was listed in April last year with $11.5m hopes. The pavilion-style accommodation, spread over much of its 1776sq m holding, is accessed by inclinator. Stephen Chen at the ASX-listed The Agency took on the listing in December last year, seeking $10m buyers. It was last sold for $7m in the pre-GFC boom of 2007.
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Hey big Spender
Across Pittwater on the western shores, independent federal member for Wentworth Allegra Spender has listed at Great Mackerel Beach, where she’s upgrading weekenders.
The two-bedroom 1950s cottage, a 320m level walk to the shoreline, was bought with her husband, Canva executive Mark Capps in 2017 for $535,000. There’s also a one-bedroom studio on its 780sq m grounds. Its is being marketed for February 12 auction by local agent Kathryn Hall as “an oasis of serenity”.
There is $1m guidance. The couple bought two doors away for $1.8m just after she won the May 21 election. Their purchase borders the national park.
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In the swim
The first of the five swims in the Pittwater Ocean Swim series kicks off at Newport in early January. Sophie Scamps, the local MP, is expected to again swim the 800m course. The Macquarie Big Swim from Palm Beach to Whale Beach will take place on the last Sunday of January.
The 2.8km swim started in 1974 with 40 competitors, and now gets around 2000. Conditions vary from dead calm to testing southeasterly or uncomfortable nor’easters. Some swimmers have completed over 30 swims, with former bank chief Nicholas Moore among the regulars given his weekender at Whale Beach. Another former banking boss, Cameron Clyne, is expected to compete this year.
There’s also the 1km Ray White Prestige Little Big Swim sponsored by estate agent Noel Nicholson, who has been seeking the $4.5m sale of a Whale Beach Rd, Palm Beach new build site since July, showing how the market has slowed.
Its been listed by Canberra interior designer Alexi Dascarolis, whose husband Michael runs the Decca Building Group. The 689sq m hillside site cost $3.25m in late 2020 after three days on the market. Her $4.3m plans by architect Madeleine Blanchfield remain under Northern Beaches Council consideration.
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Built in the 1870s, this massive pile on 2.83ha in NSW’s Hunter Valley is one of Australia’s finest heritage estates. Asking price: $10 million.