Sydney’s $95m Edgewater sale still shrouded in mystery

A $95m Sydney harbourfront property deal — still shrouded in mystery — was the highlight of the prestige market across Australia during 2020.

Edgewater at 92 Wolseley Rd, Point Piper, sold for $95m.

A $95m Sydney harbourfront property deal — still shrouded in mystery — was the highlight of the surprisingly busy prestige market across Australia during 2020.

In a year of extraordinary challenges for many businesses, the nation’s top-selling estate agents did more than just survive.

Adapting to the times, they found big spenders who shared their belief that high-end real estate is a precious asset.

Sydney Sotheby’s agent Michael Pallier noted Sydney real estate was seen as a “safe place” as he quietly secured the $95m off-market sale in Point Piper in September.

Edgewater, on the world-renowned Wolseley Road waterfront, now ranks as the second-priciest among Australia’s home sales.

It was sold by the Katies fashion retail chain founder Joe Brender, dubbed Australia’s textile king, and his wife Gerda, who shared their ownership of the duplex for more than three decades with his late business partner Sam Moss and his wife, Agi.

Edgy Edgewater

There has been no confirmation of the Edgewater buyer as the gold mining tycoon “John” Changjin Li. And when contacted by the local paper, The Wentworth Courier, Pallier advised that reports naming a Chinese buyer were “totally incorrect”.

It’s little different to Edgewater’s prior sale.

There was considerable intrigue in its sale in 1984 to the rag trading duo by the Gold Coast-bound entertainment industry promoter Michael Edgley. Back then word didn’t leak out for several months after the reputed $5m sale to Tisma 62 Pty Ltd, a shelf company directed by prominent Sydney solicitor David Baffsky, who rebuffed media speculation over its buyers by pointing out that neither Brender or Moss owned shares in the company.

Their eventually confirmed purchase had come shortly after Katies, which had been founded in the 1950s, was sold to the Brian Quinn-led retailer G.J. Coles for a reported $40m, half in cash and half in shares. It had 100 outlets and 1000 staff.

Now aged 77, Edgley had paid $520,000 in 1981 for the 1800sq m property when it was bought from Michael Hawksford, who headed Bremick, the engineering supplies business.

Edgley commissioned a six-bedroom, five-bathroom home, with 240sq m space over four levels, costing $650,000, from the Perth architect Rob Hanlin. It came with the de rigueur sunken informal living area and cream carpet.

Edgley’s thwarted $8m selling expectations would have bettered the $5,750,000 that Robert Sangster, dubbed the first racing tycoon, had paid in 1982 for nearby Radford, an imposing 1930s home on its 2959sq m Wolseley Crescent block, which his wife, Susan (nee Rossiter-Peacock) renamed Toison d’Or, having secured the right from her Isle of Man-based ex-husband in 1985 to live in the house, reputedly until she died or remarried.

Edgewater enjoys a 40m harbour frontage.

Rich history

Edgewater, with its 40m harbour frontage directly in front of the Harbour Bridge and Opera House, got a quick $1m strata conversion after its sale to Moss and Brender by the architect Stephen Gergely.

It also got its tennis court on the waterfront and its deepwater jetty by Brender and Moss, who maintained a business partnership for more than half a century before Moss, an Auschwitz survivor, died in 2016, aged 90.

They jointly owned the textile group Brenmoss Holdings, which dominated Australia’s bed linen, fabric and clothing manufacturing industry.

Both were low-key, with the Polish-born Brender being the front man, having his highest profile in the business pages around the time he sold his stake in Coles to Solly Lew in 1989.

Both were avid art collectors and Brender was the Art Gallery of NSW’s first sponsor of the Archibald Prize.

Brender, who arrived in Australia in 1952, had a 10-seater private jet in the 1980s and drove a Bentley which was parked at its street-level undercover garage, from where a lift travelled down to the two-level Brender residence, then to the two-level Moss apartment. There is a shared entertainment level accommodating a kitchen and an indoor pool.

It’s understood the latest buyer paid $47.5m for each of the homes with settlement delayed until 2022 when it is likely to be converted it into a single residence.

Quick deal

The official Australian record remains the $100m paid by Mike and Annie Cannon- Brookes for Fairwater, the former Fairfax media family mansion on the Double Bay harbourfront. Fairwater’s $71m neighbour Elaine, bought by Atlasssian co-founder Scott Farquhar, and his wife Kim Jackson, shifted into third place following the Edgewater sale.

Fairwater is on around 11,000sq m and Elaine on 7000sq m, with both beachfront.

“I showed the (Edgewater) buyer an $18m waterfront home in Vaucluse,” Pallier told Mansion magazine after the sale, “but he ideally wanted a tennis court and a view of the bridge.”

Pallier told him he knew a home that matched that description but it would cost close to $100m.

“Our office managed the lease on one of the two apartments at the property and the owner had mentioned that he would sell at $100m. I showed (the buyer) the home and within half an hour of inspecting we had a deal at $95m.”

Hey, big spender

The Bongin, Queensland-based Michael Edgley maintains a pretty low profile these days, but for a time his property acumen and his occasional overspending made the headlines.

Edgley’s involvement in his family’s theatrical management business had begun at the age of 19, and in 1967 at the age of 23 Edgley took over following the death of his father, Eric, who had worked with the legendary Charlie Chapman before his arrival from Britain.

Through the decades, and his extended heyday as the promoter of the Moscow Circus, Edgley had choice abodes across the country.

They were on St Georges Road, Toorak, on the riverfront at Hunters Hill, five homes on the Gold Coast’s millionaire’s row Hedges Ave and pricey Jutland Parade, Dalkeith in Perth. Edgley sold his Dalkeith house for an Australian record price of $2.15m in 1979 through estate agent Willie Porteous to Japanese buyers, as he crossed the continent and swooped on the best in Hunters Hill.

The Jutland Parade house was sold again in 1980 for about $4m, setting another Australian record through Porteous, when bought by mining speculator Danny Hill, the second of three known times when Swan River mansion mania saw Perth outdoing Sydney’s prestige prices.

Garden Reach was the Hunters Hill mansion where Edgley and his second wife Jeni took up Sydney residency, having paid $1.25m in 1980 when it was bought from Parramatta Road motor dealer Ron Phillips, the father of two of Sydney’s top selling estate agents, Alexander and William.

Garden Reach’s 1980 price matched the earlier $1.25m sale of Boomerang in 1978 and was ranked as Sydney’s first single-storey residential dwelling to fetch more than $1m.

After just a year Edgley sold to developer George Parlby for $2,125,000 in 1981, as he again headed east, this time to Point Piper. Garden Reach sold in 1985 at $4,625,000 and it was Chris Mackay, then at UBS, who paid $9m in 2001 on the 3300sq m Garden Reach’s last sale.

We glean the recent big excitement on the Lane Cove River was the sighting of Oceana, near neighbour’s Dick Honan’s 55m super yacht, last week.

Making the move

Edgley, who was the Sydney Swans president, recently spoke to his daughter Gigi on her blog recalling his various homes.

“It got to the point we had so many shows that living in Perth — and I love Perth and think it is one of the most beautiful cities in the world — but having to fly from Perth to Melbourne or Sydney practically on a weekly basis, I got to the point we decided to move to Sydney and we built a lovely home on the harbour.

“Then I fell in love with the Gold Coast because we were making the movie, The Coolangatta Gold, with six months travelling from Sydney.

“The Gold Coast was like a young Perth,” he recalled.

Edgley and his third wife Justine Summers, who was principal dancer with the Australian Ballet from 1996 to 2000, have been together 20 years, with three children.

Michael Edgley’s initial Gold Coast home, 2 Maryland Avenue, Carrara, is up for sale again.

Go for Gold

The Carrara trophy which was Edgley’s initial Gold Coast home has coincidently been listed with offers due February 3. It was a 70sq m, five-bedroom home that came with a marble entrance, four ensuite bathrooms, and a spa in the master bedroom.

The current marketing of the luxurious mansion on its 4492sq m Nerang riverfront by estate agent Michael Kollosche notes it’s considered “the original Gold Coast mansion of the 1980s for its celebrated grandeur”.

“The timeless two-storey residence has a rich history of high-profile owners and guests, having hosted legendary soirees in its heyday,” Kollosche noted. The Gold Coast Bulletin suggested Frank Sinatra stayed there for the official opening of Sanctuary Cove in 1988.

The house was first sold in the late 1980s at a reported $600,000, having been bought by Edgley for $1.1m in 1984.

It last sold at $1.899m in 2013 with the six-bedroom Maryland Ave mansion having been restored and extended over the past four years by the owner Jennifer Fernandez de Viana.

The latest official valuation of the land is $2m, according to CoreLogic.

Edgley sold Carrara when he built on Mermaid Beach, living there for two years before selling to bookmaker Terry Page for $2.525m in 1989.

With 20m of beach frontage on Hedges Ave, the house included a nightclub and bar.

Singer Diana Ross called the now demolished property as “the best little beach house in the world” after leasing it in the 1990s.