Gina Rinehart relists Sunshine Beach block for $17.2m
The mining tycoon is trying her hand at an ambitious property flip by relisting a beachfront block bought for $11.3m last year for an almighty profit.
Queensland’s Sunshine Coast was the most lively beach lifestyle location for luxury coastal home sales in 2022.
While it didn’t snare top place – a $40m sale at Palm Beach on Sydney’s northern beaches – the Noosa precinct had six of the nation’s top 10 recreational house sales as high-profile buyers splashed hundreds of millions of dollars on real estate.
Gina Rinehart, the mining and agricultural tycoon who made her mark on the neighbourhood, has already played the opening gambit for 2023 with her desire for an ambitious flip.
She wants to onsell a recent beachfront acquisition for a mighty profit.
Her investment company picked up a 531sq m beachfront site for $11.2m last February that has just returned to the market with a $17.2m price guide through Tom Offermann Real Estate.
The Park Crescent front row offering is being marketed with plans for a four-level Paul Clout-designed beach house, although the concept plans drawn up by the prior owner, Andrew Vandersteen, have not been council-approved and are not included in the sale.
Vandersteen, who directs construction company Beyond Property Developments, had paid $7.05m in late 2020 as the pandemic triggered the uplift in demand for regional retreats.
Rinehart and her mining entourage have accumulated five properties in the neighbourhood costing close to $75m since 2020.
Beach bonanza
Noosa’s priciest reported beach home sale of 2022 was a $28.5m Shaun Lockyer-designed mansion on a 636sq m oceanfront block on Arakoon Crescent, Sunshine Beach, purchased off-market in April by Wilson Asset Management founder Geoff Wilson and his wife, Karen Greer. The building block had sold for $4.85m in 2016, and before that it had sold for $5.25m in 2015.
The Double Bay stockpicker had previously spent $6.5m on a Seaview Terrace beachfront in May 2020, for which he’s seeking council permission for a new house.
The next priciest was at Noosa Heads in July when Jalna yoghurt founder Campbell McLarenand his wife,Pam, spent $27m for a riverfront home through Richardson & Wrench. The purchase came shortly after the sale of Jalna to French dairy giant Lactalis.
The property had sold at $5.9m in 2015 when the 2005-built Stephen Kidd-designed home was bought by Tim Street, the expatriate former Macquarie Capital Advisors managing director.
Just below the $20m cut-off for the top 10 sales was the recent $19.6m sale of another Noosa Heads home to Queensland coal entrepreneur Matthew Latimore.
But signalling a slowdown in momentum in the prestige market, there had been a $21m asking price for the north-facing, seven-bedroom Tim Ditchfield-designed home, which took 170 days to find its buyer for David Tynan, the financial advisory veteran, and his wife, Judy.
Latimore splashed out $14.25m in late 2021 around at Sunshine Beach, purchasing from Colinton Capital’s Simon Moore.
There were 11 sales above $10m around Noosa last year including Lazard’s Toorak-based managing director, Andrew Leyden, and Alison Tarditi spending $19m on the retreat of Ross Palazzesi from Metricon Homes. CoreLogic notes six sales above $10m in both 2021 and 2020 around Noosa, with a further five dating back to 2017. Leyden first bought in 2003.
Crest of the wave
Last year’s most expensive beach sale in Australia was when yacht broker Ian Malouf paid a $40m residential record at Sydney’s pricey summer playground, Palm Beach, as revealed in the Competing Bids’s Boxing Day column.
Malouf bought Walter Barda-designed beachfront home Anakela, overlooking Pittwater, which sits on 1948sq m. He now owns three houses on Iluka Rd with his earlier nearby 600sq m acquisitions costing $20m and $18.6m over the past 20 months.
Anakela was bought off-market from Doug Shears, the agrifood entrepreneur, who purchased it for a record $15m in 2007 from Jewel Food Stores tycoon Jim Fleming and his wife, Angela, who’d built after paying a record $3.65m in 1995.
The suburb’s record was briefly hilltop, when $27.5m was paid in June last year for Beau Site Sur Mer by Richard White, the WiseTech Global software billionaire. The seller, Muir Burnside Asset Management chief, Frank Elsworth and his wife, Amber, then went on to buy nearby for $26.5m, which was Palm Beach’s other entrant on the top 10 list.
The previous Palm Beach beachfront record was three doors away from the latest Malouf buy, where $27m was paid in 2021 by hospitality entrepreneur John Szangolies for the double-fronted holding of Virginia Nelson, widow of wholesale tobacco tycoon Arthur Nelson.
Palm Beach had just the five sales above $10m last year, down on the 13 in 2021, and seven in 2020.
In regional NSW there were two Byron district acreages at $20m-plus.
Watch this space
No sale in the top 10 at Portsea and Sorrento, where there was a $9.6m deadheat between Portsea sales on MacGregor Avenue and Point Nepean Road. But neighbourhood sightings suggest veteran top seller Gerald Delany at Kay & Burton is prepping a Portsea clifftop offering for early 2023. The Mornington Peninsula did however have three recreational acreage sales at over $20m at Somers, Flinders and Red Hill South.
Coast with the most
There was one beachfront sale on the top 10 from the Gold Coast, on the so-called millionaires row, Hedges Avenue, Mermaid Beach.
Computershare co-founder Chris Morris bought his Hedges Ave retreat for $15.75m in 2020, and sold after just 15 months for $21m to Lindsay Smith, son of PFD Food Services founder Richard Smith. As Mermaid Beach land prices hit $23,703 per square metre in a nearby sale, PropTrack’s latest Market Trends report calculated the median house price had leapfrogged the Sunshine Beach.
All in
South Australia saw the $8.25m sale of the beachouse at Nalyappa, some 175km northwest of Adelaide. It was bought by expatriate poker player David Steicke, the commodities trader who lives in Hong Kong. The six-bedroom, five-bathroom home, known as The Dunes, was built in 2014 over some 875sq m. It sits on a 110ha holding with helipad.
It was sold by pioneering family scion Peter Michell, who’d appointed Giordano & Partners in conjunction with Cullen Royle.
The Max Pritchard-designed Scandinavian-inspired luxury escape set a regional residential record sale. There’s double-glazed walls of glass at the off-grid home with 80kW of solar panelling funnelled to a bank of lithium-ion batteries. There’s also 300,000 litres of rain water tanking.
Best in the west
Eagle Bay was Western Australia’s top beach location with a $4.75m sale by Wally Unger, the mining industry veteran who made his name at Glindemann & Kitching in the Kambalda nickel boom in the 1960s. The resort-style five-bedroom home, with one bedroom studio, was set on 5788sq m. It had last sold for $3.9m in 2009, when the asking price was $4.8m.
Perth orthopaedic surgeon Peter Hales was behind the southwest region’s next priciest sale last year at $4.075m.
One out of the box
A Rye bathing box, scheduled for weekend auction, instead saw a midweek $450,000 deal.
Prue Jones at Place Coastal Property secured the sale of boatshed 134, having sold the vendor’s oceanside home last year. She said the boatshed had been “a haven for the vendor during lockdown as it was used as an office”.
Located within the 5km permitted walk radius, the boatshed location “provided exercise and a sea outlook as he conducted business meetings using the solar powered wi-fi”.
Recently upgraded with roof insulation and shiplap lining boards, the boatshed was bought by a local family with four grandchildren.
“I’m sure it will be well loved,” Jones said. The marketing campaign yielded 3200 views on realestate.com.au.
Symond drops price on plush Knightsbridge address
Retired mortgage broker John Symond has again lowered the asking price on his luxury apartment in London’s upscale Knightsbridge, and it is now on the market for $79m.
It could be your own Downton Abbey
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.