How do you sell a $50m mansion after 720 days on the market?
The Gold Coast’s Villa Vittoria comes with a waterfront and boat, a Bentley and a 6.5m King Neptune thrown in. So why has it taken 2½ years to sell? A new campaign offers solutions.
It is the Gold Coast mansion that comes with everything – waterfront views, a boat, a Bentley and a 6.5-metre bronze imported Italian statue of King Neptune sitting in the entrance way.
It also comes with a price tag of $50m – and so far, after more than 720 days on the market, Villa Vittoria has found no buyers.
The Sovereign Island mansion – six bedrooms, nine bathrooms and 12 car spaces – has sat on the market for 2½ years and has been handled by various real estate agents. Even a $32m bid at auction last year was rejected by its owner Riccardo Rizzi, a property developer who relocated back to Perth some years ago.
When it was first listed, in 2019, Rizzi was asking around $40m for the sprawling home designed by Brunei royal family local architect Bayden Goddard and bought in 2013 for $5.3m. Since then the estimated price has blown out to $50m.
Rizzi reckons this will be the year it sells. “I think it will absolutely sell very, very soon,” he says.
“By about 2032, which is only a decade away, I think property values will double.
“So it is in fact an excellent investment for the next buyer. It’s a little bit unique, it’s something a bit special and of course it’s ‘old world’, so it doesn’t necessarily appeal to all buyers out there.”
The third iteration of the sales campaign is different. Led by Raine and Horne Elite’s Alex Caraco, it soft-launched in December with the announcement that the new owner would not only walk away with the house but also a Bentley Continental GT V8 and a 16.8m Princess cruiser.
It kicked off on Thursday with a celebrity-filled bash curated under the watchful eye of publicist Max Markson, who has been brought in to promote the property.
Miss World Australia Sarah Marschke, Olympic gold medallist Emily Seebohm, and African Australian actor Suzan Mutesi were among those in attendance, strutting the swings of the mansion and jetting around the water on electric flying surfboards and electric water e-bikes.
The event coincided with the finishing touches being put on the property, finally bringing to end a mammoth seven-year build.
David Price, Queensland general manager at The Agency, says this is what a drawn-out sales effort needs – a breath of fresh air. “The main thing is changing what they’ve done before,” Price says. “Every property has a buyer, every single one. It’s just how you go about marketing that and the price that they want.”
This time around, few pictures of the sprawling residence with a 30m pool in a Roman-inspired garden can be found online. Caraco explains the aims is to entice inquiries through curiosity.
“We can do FaceTime, Zoom, walk-through videos, anything you like, but at the end of the day even in today’s market, I still feel they need to see the home physically,” Caraco says.
So far, it appears to be working. One offer is already on the table from an interested party in Melbourne that has fallen short of the asking price.
Negotiations are still under way, with a further two groups to inspect in February when the current Omicron outbreak is expected to subside. If he can hit his asking price, Rizzi will have come out well ahead. He purchased the property at a mortgagee auction from Clare Marks and Scott Tyne, who had outlaid $21.44m on the initial construction and block of land.
The reopening of international borders has allowed the campaign to be widened to Dubai, the United States and Britain in an attempt to capture the attention of a cashed-up overseas buyer looking for an local trophy home.
That said, Caraco expects the new owner will come from Melbourne or Sydney.
Even in a booming property market, some can languish for multiple reasons.
When it comes to getting the property over the line, director of Ray White’s agency in Brisbane’s New Farm, Haesley Cush, says it usually comes down to one of three things: price, presentation or promotion.
“Every owner wants the answer to be ‘we just haven‘t found the right buyer’,” he says. “If your property is just not moving, you’ve got to really look at what have you done and if you are getting consistent feedback about something that’s an issue, change it.”
Incentives to purchase are nothing new. Furniture and whitegoods packages and upgrades are used extensively in the home-building industry to get through hard times and a few years ago, an apartment on one of Brisbane’s main roads was sold with a year’s worth of KFC chicken thrown in.
Cush says there is nothing wrong with a sweetener, so long as the buyer feels like they are getting a deal. “If people think that the property is already out of reach or already overpriced, they think they‘re actually paying for the incentive too,” he says.
“The only reason you would do it if it wasn’t going to make it great value would be to get marketing on the property.”
If the buyer of the Sovereign Islands property is unwilling to purchase with the car and boat, concessions can be made on the price. “If people think that the property is already out of reach or already overpriced, they think they're actually paying for the incentive too,” Cush says.
“The only reason you would do it if it wasn’t going to make it great value would be to get marketing on the property.”
Still, sometimes the reason a property can’t sell comes down to seller expectations. Reflecting on his own past experiences selling luxury homes, Price says “rose coloured glasses” can cloud a vendor’s judgment because of the personal connection between the person and the plaster.
“It’s a bit like we think our kids the best basketball or soccer player and then the coach will tell you, actually they’re not,” he says
“Property can be like that. You can think ‘wow, it’s the best’, but even though often it is, you may need to tweak it. You’ve just got to be completely honest with them. You’ve tried to your way before … so let me do my job and get the result we want.”
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