Trophy Homes: Andrew Robb sells Brighton home in Melbourne

Former trade minister Andrew Robb and wife Maureen have sold their Brighton home, in Melbourne’s southeast.

The view from the Wharf Street house.

With plans to move back to Sydney, former Australian trade minister Andrew Robb and wife Maureen have sold their Brighton home, in Melbourne’s southeast, for $2.655 million. They transformed the late 20th century Fasham Johnson home that cost them $1.4m in 2012. Set on 700sq m, the single-level home has three bedrooms and two bathrooms around a central courtyard. Hodges Bentleigh agents Campbell Cooney and Alana McGuinness sold the home pre-auction. The couple paid $3.735m for Indigo, a luxury hilltop trophy home overlooking Palm Beach. It’s just across the road from the home of their daughter, Pip, who runs the nearby The Boathouse at Palm Beach with her husband Andrew Goldsmith. They will also look for a bolthole in the Sydney CBD. This week The Australian reported that Robb is raising capital from foreign investors, local trading houses and superannuation funds to build a $750m agricultural investment fund.

RFG chief bites into Port Douglas

Former Retail Food Group head Tony Alford has emerged as the buyer of a Port Douglas trophy home at $6.4m. But the property was not the one sold by Melbourne developer Michael Yates and wife Lou. They got $6.8m for their nearby five-bedroom north Queensland retreat which has yet to settle. The Yates property was designed as three pavilions by architect Alex Gencur. Barbara Wolveridge of Raine & Horne Port Douglas Mossman sold the home. Another of Port Douglas’s trophy homes, Eagles Nest, has returned to the market at $4.25m also through Wolveridge, in conjunction with Lynn Malone at LynnMalone HOME and Callum Jones at The Pink Group Port Douglas.

Sale for Hugo Boss boss

The former Hugo Boss managing director Aaron Kanat has sold his luxury home on Victoria’s Bellarine Peninsula. The waterfront home on Corio Bay sold at between $5.5m and $6m through RT Edgar Point Lonsdale. A couple from Melbourne bought the 2ha property with tennis court and self-contained guest accommodation. The block has direct access to a north-facing beach and cost $1.75m in 2006.

TV star settles in Collingwood

Having sold her NSW southern highlands home, Offspring star Linda Cropper has settled on an apartment in Melbourne’s Collingwood. Cropper, better known as eccentric grandmother Geraldine Proudman in the popular Network Ten drama, has paid $926,000 for the top-floor apartment in the Gibsonia townhouse development. She probably scouted out the apartment when recently filming the seventh season of Offspring that is shot around the corner in Fitzroy. The two-level apartment, which has two bedrooms and two bathrooms, last traded at $610,000 in 2007. Cropper plays Geraldine, the outspoken matriarch known for her mothering of her three children played by Kat Stewart, Richard Davies and Asher Keddie.

[e-mail]