Point Piper mansion Rockleigh tops financial year sales list with $85m
Tightly held pink Point Piper harbourfront mansion Rockleigh, which sold for about $85m in May, topped the nation’s house sales in the 2024 financial year.
Tightly held pink Point Piper harbourfront mansion Rockleigh, which sold for about $85m in May, topped the nation’s house sales in the 2024 financial year.
Rockleigh is yet to settle, but the buyer has been pinpointed as recycled shopping bag tycoon Frank Qiang Geng.
The house, on its 1284sq m Wolseley Rd holding and has a high knockdown probability, had last traded in 1978, when Philip and Valmae Rundle purchased it for $325,000 from Helen Pratten, the widow of printer Fredrick Pratten, who had died in 1977.
Rundle died in 1991 and his widow in 2016, with the property being sold by their daughter Philippa Harvey-Sutton. There has been considerable family disharmony surrounding the estate, which was an off-market listing seeking $100m.
The top 10 house sales of the financial year totalled about $490m, with a $36m cut-off point. Sydney had six and Melbourne four sales in what proved a commission-crunching year for leading estate agents.
The previous year saw deals totalling about $700m with the same city mix, when there was a $52.5m cut-off, up on the $34m in the 2021-22 financial year.
Nothing from Queensland or the west, although Richard and Mary Delaney, a shareholder in beverage trader Liquor Zaar Australia, have recently pocketed $30m when selling in Noosa.
Riverstone, their Tim Ditchfield-designed home with a jetty on 616sq m, sold through Tom Offermann Real Estate to Rachel Uhlmann, who co-directs companies with mining technology entrepreneur Wayne Romer. It ranks as the second-highest purchase in Queensland residential history.
Boomerang second
Elizabeth Bay residence Boomerang, which sold last November for about $80m and is yet to settle, ranked as the second dearest reputed sale of the financial year. The Sydney property was long owned by the family of trucking billionaire Lindsay Fox.
The latest whispers suggest the buyer is reputedly originally from Vietnam, although like many on the sales list it remains shrouded in speculation on both its buyer identity and price.
The $51.5m sale of Notrella in Sydney’s Point Piper was the third priciest when Ben Voltz, the co-founder of an e-commerce firm Rokt, and wife Briana bought the eight-bedroom, six-bathroom 1904 Queen Anne Federation-style mansion.
Sitting on a 984sq m Wolseley Rd hillside block, it was sold by Coolmore Australia boss Tom Magnier.
The Voltz couple then sold their redundant Toorak Ave, Toorak house in Melbourne for $7m plus through Antoinette Nido at RT Edgar.
Big sales in Toorak
Melbourne secured the fourth dearest house sale of the year when David Prior, the founder of Five: AM organic yoghurt and his shoe designer wife Sallie, sold their Toorak mansion, Karum, for about $40m. The St Georges Rd home had a price guide of $46m-$50m last September.
The five-bedroom, six-bathroom mansion had been bought from restaurateur Christopher Lucas in 2014 for $23.3m. The buyer is set to emerge as neurosurgeon Richard Bittar, whose luxury former South Yarra home has sold through Kay & Burton.
Back in Toorak, Alexander Wakim the son of the founder of Melbourne-based Phoenix Lithium, Nick Wakim, bought last August for about $40m on delayed settlement terms in the fifth-priciest sale.
The 3700sq m Myoora Road property sold in an off-market deal with long-time owners Dion and Sandy Abrahams.
The Toorak home of late Melbourne billionaire David Hains fetched about $39m to rank as the sixth priciest. It came after a year-long campaign.
The Albany Rd home has reputedly sold to accounting giant Findex’s Spiro Paule and wife Conny, who sold their Toorak mansion, the 1945 Georgian-style Dunraven on Clendon Rd, for about $36m late last year to retailer Mark McInnes and wife Lisa Kelly. It was the ninth priciest sale.
McInnes has since sold nearby Stonnington House when seeking $19.5m, having paid $12.3m in 2017.
Pastoralists cash in
The Willow Tree Upper Hunter pastoralists Rob and Camilla Cropper sold their Luigi Rosselli-designed Bellevue Hill for $39.35m last September ranking as the seventh priciest deal. It sold off-market to QirongGuo.
The Kambala Rd federation house had traded pre-renovations in 2014 for $5.64m.
Sydney FC chairman Scott Barlow and wife Alina, who’d sold Point Piper waterfront Akuna for $60m in June last year, emerged as the $39m buyers of the Vaucluse home of telco tycoon Canning Fok last October.
They have since lodged $1.9m MHN Design Union plans for the hillside Queens Ave address as apparently they considered the Graham Jahn-designed home as lacking overall functionality and amenity for their family needs.
It ranked as the eighth priciest deal.
The 10th place sale was the $36.2m sale in July last year of the luxury Vaucluse home owned by the Balagiannis hotelier family to Chunming Wang.
The Vaucluse Rd address, known as Panorama, had a four-bedroom home with wet-edge pool and spa.
It was built after the 1070sq m block cost $3.21m in 1994.
Hammer bangs at $7m
Melbourne had the top advised weekend auction sale when $7m was paid for the five-bedroom, two bathroom house at 7 Charles St, Hawthorn.
It had been listed with $5.5m-$6m guidance for the newly built Neil Architecture-designed home with interiors by Studio Jung.
There were 12,165 page views during the marketing campaign by Mike Beardsley and Ellie Morrish at Jellis Craig Boroondara. The building block had cost $1.65m in 2020.
There was no result advisory for the nation’s priciest weekend auction listing, Carinya at Killara, by McGrath in conjunction with Stone Real Estate. The 1924 Arnold St home with 2008 extension that sits on 1663sq m with a pool and tennis court had $8.5m hopes.
It was among the 30 prestige Sydney auction listings seeking $5m-plus, with analysis by Competing Bids confirming that the top end is nowhere near as strong as the overall market, with only three reported sales.
Clearance rate eases
The national preliminary clearance rate eased from 72 per cent to 70 per cent last week, according to CoreLogic, with Adelaide the strongest market at 82 per cent.
PropTrack noted this week’s national volume of winter auctions falls to 2358, then to 1746 in the following week.
PropTrack economist Anne Flaherty calculated that auction activity was elevated especially in Sydney, up 50 per cent year-on-year this week. The auctions include the Paddington property best known for its time as Lucio’s restaurant.
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