Just $15,000 a week for Woodlands trophy home
Woodlands, the recently sold $35m Woollahra trophy home, has briefly returned to the executive home rental market at an ambitious $15,000 a week.
Woodlands, the recently sold $35m Woollahra trophy home, has briefly returned to the executive home rental market. It’s been offered at an ambitious $15,000 a week after its sale by the expatriate former Crown boss Rob Rankin.
The restored 1880s colonial-style mansion has been a prestige rental after its 2008 Luigi Rosselli renovation with occupants including Sir Elton John during his 2020 tour; Chris Hemsworth with wife Elsa Pataky during the filming of Thor: Love and Thunder; Hugh Jackman and his wife Deborra-Lee Furness, and the Ahoy Club’s yacht broker Ian Malouf before he made his big property splash elsewhere in Sydney’s east.
Rankin had acquired Woodlands for $6,825,000 in 2003 from then power couple John and Julie Singleton, who’d bought it in 1999 for $4.5m from the television executive Bruce Gyngell, who’d paid $2,195,000 in 1993.
Built for Samuel H Smyth of the Sydney Marine Assurance Company, it was home to Clayton Utz lawyer SirHector Clayton and his widow Phyllis for six decades until its $700,000 sale in 1983 to stockbroker Ross Polkinghorne and his wife Di.
It’s now owned by Melburnites Chris Harrop, the veteran Bain & Company partner, and his wife Kathryn. Woodlands is only available until December through Viviana Suarez at Cohen Farquharson.
The Harrops recently sold their 1930s Toorak home to Emma Leos, the wife of prefab building entrepreneur Nick Leos, who’ve listed in Bellevue Hill with reported $38m hopes given their return to Toorak.
Rankin’s off-market campaign to sell was prompted by the split with his wife, Paula Bopf, and the birth of a young son with his UK-based partner.
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Top sale unclear
The top 12 house sales that sold across the capital cities during the last financial year fetched a cumulative $520m total, according to analysis by Competing Bids. Sydney’s east dominated with nine in the list, including four from Vaucluse. Across Sydney Harbour, Mosman had the one sale which was the list’s $33m cut-off point. There were two Toorak sales in the list, compiled from data from realestate.com.au, CoreLogic and the informed property grapevine.
There could still be sales to emerge, along with official prices on settlements.
The recent financial year’s top seller is not yet known. It’s a contest between a Vaucluse hillside home and a Darling Point harbourfront, both of which have sold for around $63m.
Solicitor John Landerer and his wife Michelle, who sold the Vaucluse mansion after some six years on the market, recently bought their next home on Coolong Ave, Vaucluse, paying $18m for the offering of businessman and John Fairfax dynasty scion Charles Fairfax through Sotheby’s agent Michael Pallier. Lisa Allen, the ex-wife of Matt Allen, the former Dominguez & Barry, Potter Warburg and UBS operative, sold for around $63m in Darling Point to healthcare entrepreneur Dr Glenn Haifer.
The top 12 tally in the 2020-21 financial year was $486m, with Sydney’s east again dominant, excepting a $40m Hawthorn sale, and pricey deals in Toorak and Sorrento above its $30m cut-off price. There was a reduced $344m tally in 2019-20, interrupted by the early panicked pause of the pandemic, with the top 12 cut-off point just $19m.
Worth the wait
There are sales with delayed settlements from past financial years, but just because they haven’t paid doesn’t mean they aren’t in occupancy. The gold mining tycoon “John” Changjin Li recently sought the redesign his new digs, Edgewater on Wolseley Rd, Point Piper, ahead of his mooted 2023 settlement date. With plans drawn up by architects MHNDU, they were lodged under the names of the current owners, the Brender and Moss families, since the reputed $95m sale in 2020 was on extended settlement terms through Pallier.
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Prestige listing
The freshest prestige listing in the current financial year is the imminent marketing of 17 St Georges Rd by Marshall White. The $65m to $70m price guidance for the 7854sq m estate will take the Victorian record off the $52.5m paid for the Stonington, Malvern mansion which art dealer Rod Menzies bought in 2017.
The Toorak listing is best known as the longtime residence of DameHilda Stevenson, the philanthropic heiress to the Sunshine Harvester fortune of her father, Hugh McKay, who invented a combine-harvester.
She bought the three-storey, 24 room Georgian mansion in 1940 for £25,500, having married soldier and accountant George Stevenson four years earlier. It was bought from ship owner David Hunter and his wife Margaret, who had the 1936 home designed by architects Hughes and Orme.
The house was sold by Stevenson’s executors to the current vendors, the Nanut family, in late 1987, with its official 1991 settlement at $9m, a record price, easily exceeding the $4.75m paid by Robert Holmes a Court for Miegunyah, on Orrong Rd, Toorak in early 1987.
Stevenson was a supporter of many organisations, including the Royal Children’s Hospital. The Sunshine Foundation, set up in 1954 with her two siblings, continues to support causes from its $12m in assets, including the Australian Wildlife Conservancy, Sailability Victoria, the South Sundanese Australian Youth United and Wanta Aboriginal Corporation. She was also known for her Derby Day eve cocktail party.
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Sunshine bargain
It was Melbourne’s Sunshine that had the nation’s cheapest auction outcome when $295,000 was paid for a one-bedroom, one-bathroom 1970-built villa. The unit sold through agentPeter Travlos who’d had a $240,000 to $260,000 price guide for the 61sq m space last sold at $115,000 in 2004.
The nation’s top reported sale was a dated four-bedroom house in Chiswick for $4.605m. The Hezlet St property, with river views, attracted 11 bidders when offered for the first time since 1975.
Of the 1453 results collected across the nation so far by CoreLogic, 55 per cent were successful over the past week, the lowest preliminary clearance since April 2020. The success rate stood at 59.8 per cent the week prior.
One of the contested weekend auctions saw $805,000 paid for a one-bedroom shed at South Durras on the NSW South Coast. Christine Ewin and Dianne Cox from the My Agent Team Batemans Bay had given $600,000 guidance. There were three registered bidders in the room and four online, with it selling competitively to a buyer from Canberra.
The 1215sq m holding, 200m from the sand, has a three-year-old studio with composting toilet, gas shower, 5000 litre water tank and 12V solar panels for lights.
The building block last sold at $220,000 in 2013.
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