It’s just a $12m walk in the park for Grant Samuel co-CEO Guy Fergusson
The Grant Samuel co-CEO Guy Fergusson and his wife Georgina have returned to parkside living.
The Grant Samuel co-CEO Guy Fergusson and his wife Georgina have returned to parkside living. They have bought the $12m Centennial Park home of the now New York-based public art creators Marc and Gillie Schattner in an off-market deal.
The Fergussons have since sold in Northbridge for $7,225,000, having paid $3.555m in 2007 when they sold their initial Centennial Park home on busy Moore Park Rd for $1.985m.
The Schattner couple, whose works include paparazzi dog man and rabbit girl sculptures, had attempted to offload the Lang Rd home in 2018 before their move overseas. But they failed to find a buyer when they sought $7.7m.
The Schattners subsequently undertook a grander $400,000 renovation to the 1920s Federation home they’d bought from telecoms entrepreneur Peter O’Connell and modelling agent Kathy Ward for $6.5m in 2017.
After twice winning the Bondi Sculpture by the Sea Allens people’s choice award, the Schattners have been described as “the most successful and prolific creators of public art in New York’s history” by the New York Times. One of their earliest installations on Astor Place, Brooklyn was a 5m sculpture of three stacked rhinos, with the aim of warning the Northern White rhino faced extinction. It was described as art work that blurred the line between art, activism and advertisement. The most recent work of the husband-and-wife artist team was a statue of the late US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
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Still in Vogue
It took just over 24 hours for former Vogue journalist Lucie Clark and her solicitor husband Marcus to secure $6.35m in a late Saturday night deal for their 1920s Californian bungalow in Rose Bay.
The makeover of the 500sq m holding had been updated through her social media postings since the couple bought the Plumer Rd house in 2011 from EY’s Reid Zulpo for $2.7m.
The Clarks are heading back to Canberra for a “smallish town lifestyle”.
Their two-storey home was marketed as Hamptons-style with a splash of Parisian glamour. Behind its sandstone veranda, it features four bedrooms plus rear studio and pool.
Surgeon shifts
Dr Sydney Ch’ng, the prominent cancer surgeon who appeared in the Westpac 100 Women of Influence in Australia in 2015, is selling her Lane Cove home.
Ch’ng, who is a surgeon at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Camperdown, paid $2.82m for the home six years ago. Belle Property agent Simon Harrison has a $4.3m guide for its August 7 auction. The family is planning to upsize from the modernised mid-1920s home that has four bedrooms and four bathrooms.
Set on 820sq m of established gardens, it is located on Alpha Road, part of Lane Cove’s Greek Alphabet streets cluster. There’s also Beta, Delta, Gamma and Zeta roads.
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Sydney shines
Sydney saw a 90 per cent weekend success rate, just ahead of Melbourne’s 89 per cent, according to realestate.com.au. The auction clearance rate in Adelaide and Canberra sat at 88 per cent.
With 479 results Victoria was the busiest state.
Dr Andrew Wilson, the chief economist at My Housing Market, noted record numbers of midwinter auctions continued to “flood” capital city markets, with still-strong buyer activity pushing up clearance rates despite increased Covid restrictions.
Tim Lawless at CoreLogic said auctions sold prior were “unsurprisingly elevated” in Sydney at 64 per cent and Melbourne at 42 per cent, despite the lockdowns, but a smaller proportion of auctions were being withdrawn relative to earlier lockdowns (19 per cent in Sydney and 18 per cent in Melbourne) “as vendors and buyers become more comfortable with online auctions”.
Recent Ray White research showed that Melbourne vendors who held their nerve until auction day in the first six months of 2021 secured a premium of around 12 per cent more than the best offer before auction.
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Tassie seachange
The nation’s smallest auction market saw one of the two Tasmanian offerings finding a buyer. It was a humble 1940s cottage at the beachside town of Dodges Ferry, 20 minutes’ drive from Hobart Airport.
It was sold for $930,000 through Raine and Horne agent Debbie Allanby to a Sydney north shore family with four children who have Tasmanian connections. They will do it up as a holiday house, The Mercury reports.
It last sold in the 1940s for £80, but has been rarely used in the past two decades.
Dodges Ferry has had three house sales at $1m or higher since breaking through the barrier last November.
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Hop to it
The nation’s top reported auction result was in Sydney’s south at Kangaroo Point. The waterfront fetched $6.151m.
The four-bedroom, six-bathroom family home at 7 St Lukes Way had a price guide of $3.8m. The house has over 500sq m of internal space on its 1013sq m lot. It last sold in 2015 at $3.325m.
Brisbane’s top sale was $4.5m for what was marketed as a residential development site at Indooroopily. The hilltop 2100sq m Dennis St site with Queenslander home was marketed by McGrath agent Alex Jordan as an “unrivalled opportunity to subdivide into multiple lots”. Its official land value was $1.8m in June last year.
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Melbourne marvels
Melbourne’s top advised result was $2.75m when Maelstrom, an 1880s Princes Hill terrace, sold at its an online Zoom auction. The three-bedroom, one-bathroom terrace at 58 Garton St had $2.4m to $2.6m hopes through Paula Beavis and Sam Rigopoulos at Jellis Craig.
Located directly opposite Princes Park, the double-storey Victorian terrace comes with period detailing including ornate plasterwork and open fireplaces. Located within the Princes Hill College zone, it last sold in 1991 at $360,000.
For much of the 1980s it was the home of Peter “Percy” Jones, the former Carlton Football Club premiership player turned hotelier. Jones bought the terrace for $95,000 in 1980, the year he lost his coaching job to David Parkin. Jones and wife Jan sold in 1988 at $329,000.
Melbourne’s next priciest outcome was at Rosebud when $2.54m was paid for Wahgunya, at 838-840 Point Nepean Rd. The seven-bedroom home sits on a 1400sq m beachfront location.
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Photo finish
It was a dead heat between Brisbane and Melbourne for the nation’s cheapest sale. There was a $308,000 pre-auction sale of a one-bedroom 1970s apartment in Melbourne’s Ascot Vale. A three-bedroom Woodbridge cottage near Logan also fetched $308,000.
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