Palm Beach vs Portsea: Beyond the Bali cliche

The rich playgrounds of Palm Beach and it’s Melbourne equivalent Portsea have avoided the Bali and Hamptons cliches. How?

The high end homes of Palm Beach and Portsea have eschewed the fads and taken their cue from the timeless appeal of a seaside setting.

A quintessential Palm Beach home sitting above the sand on Sunrise Road, on Sydney’s northern beaches, was truly Qualia-inspired. Indeed the designers, Pike Withers, helped create the Hamilton Island resort interiors.

“The client had visited the exclusive Qualia resort and wanted us to bring that resort feel into the house,” Pike Withers director Amanda Pike wrote on her blog. “He wanted a laid-back feel that was intrinsically calming.

“A particular request was ‘to be able to sit on the view’,” she wrote – so balconies were extended and an automated sliding roof installed over the living area to allow the house to open up.

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The two-level, four-bedroom home at 30 Sunrise Road was designed in conjunction with JLD Architects for construction in 2011. It now sits amid lush gardens of Australian natives and tropical palms on a 955sq m hilltop vantage point.

It has been listed for sale with $11 million hopes through Ray White Palm Beach agents Noel Nicholson and Shane Clinton, who describe the home as exuding “extra ultra-luxury”. Every room, including the steam room, has views of the ocean and the Palm Beach headland.

Pike recalls that it was important to maintain “an Australian feel and avoid the Bali clichés in producing a resort aesthetic”. 

Homes at Palm Beach, and its Melbourne equivalent Portsea, have largely avoided the Bali feel, or even mimicking the Hamptons look.

Agents report strong summer sales have continued into autumn at these aspirational beach locations. There’s no sign yet that these prestige coastal offerings have been affected by the slowdown under way in both major capital city trophy home markets.

Portsea agent Rob Curtain at Peninsula Sotheby’s, says that if anything, “surprisingly, it’s gone the other way”.

That opinion was confirmed when Rovina, a clifftop single-level house set on 2000sq m designed by 1960s architect Geoffrey Sommers, recently sold for $13.5 million at a private Kay & Burton boardroom auction. The five-bedroom home on Point Nepean Road last traded in early 2016 for $10.7 million – $10.2 million for the house and $500,000 for the boatshed.

Just $300,000 had been spent in the intervening two years by its vendor, Jonathan Munz, whose $1.1 billion fortune comes from plumbing supplies. It sold to Russell Knowles, whose family’s retirement village empire sold to Stockland in 2007 for $329 million.

Unusually for Portsea, the property doesn’t come with a tennis court. There are 30 just on the Port Philip Bay stretch. The home was built for Larry and Peggy Watkins, well-known in the meat trade, to resemble a Roman villa with a central courtyard.

30 Sunrise Road in Palm Beach.

Despite the disappearance of the traditional Australia Day weekend auctions, there have been around 20 sales at Portsea and 46 at Sorrento so far this year, with 75 home sales in Portsea last year and 125 in Sorrento. Portsea’s median house price stands at $1.9 million, with Sorrento at $1.3 million. Sorrento saw a dilapidated house sold twice within the past year – most recently for $1.6 million, up 35 per cent on its earlier $1.185 million sale.

“We have seen tremendous capital gain from the previous year and strong buyer appetite,” Curtain says, adding that the strong price gains at Portsea have been in line with other premium locations on the Mornington Peninsula. “The Portsea property market is transacting at all-time highs. It’s a wonderful time to sell.”

Single-storey coastal homes are the most popular listings, according to Curtain, who comments that every year the end of the peninsula gets closer to being just another suburb of Melbourne.

“In a few years there will be no difference,” he says. “The super- rich will travel, the rest will enjoy at their leisure and the baby boomers will keep moving here.”

Palm Beach has seen its the entry level price soar in recent years. Last year the cheapest sale was a two-bedroom original 1950s home that sold for $950,000. Last year’s top sale was $12 million.

Local LJ Hooker agent Peter Robinson suggests the lack of stock is driving sales while demand is remaining consistent and strong.

“It is hard to now find options under $5 million in the Palm Beach area for our cashed-up buyers,” Robinson says.

He calculates that there have been 24 sales totalling more than $96 million in Palm Beach and Whale Beach in 2018.

CoreLogic puts the median Palm Beach house price at $2.6 million. Robinson says that summer was interesting, with more owners than ever before using their homes and holiday lettings almost at 100 per cent capacity.

Palm Beach enjoyed a bumper year in 2017, with nearly 60 house sales across the 2km seaside haven, which gets invaded annually by holidaymakers in search of summertime fun. Many are day-trippers attracted to the area given its long association with the Channel 7 soap Home & Away as the set of Summer Bay.

The increasingly corporate owners at both locations get annoyed when the day-trippers park on their front lawns, especially if, as writer Valerie Lawson once noted, they set up with deck chairs and Eskys full of beer and aromatic lunch dishes.

Robinson doesn’t expect the Sydney price slowdown to affect Palm Beach in the near to medium future.

Rovina at Portsea in Victoria.

“While Sydney was appreciating strongly across the past three years, Palm Beach did not see those gains,” he says. “This was a clear demonstration that our market runs its own course. The biggest change is the lack of listings under $5 million. The figures from late 2017 and 2018 clearly demonstrate that Palm Beach is one of the strongest suburbs in Sydney right now.”

Robinson recently secured the sale of a Norma Road property for $3.85 million. It was the home of local restaurateurs Andrew and Pip Goldsmith. They paid $2.625 million in 2015 but didn’t settle until late 2016, with just a minor facelift for the classic 1950s beach house.

Occupying prime peninsula positions, both Palm Beach and Portsea offer choice – Palm Beach has the ocean and Pittwater, Portsea has Port Philip Bay and the back beach. There are around 1500 properties at Portsea across 92 streets and 1100 at Palm Beach over 31 streets. Palm Beach is about an hour’s drive from the city (outside peak hour) while the trip to and from

Portsea can take up to two hours, and with toll costs that can add up to about $20 each way.

Portsea, which still has dirt roads, has about 27 current house listings; Palm Beach has 25.

The priciest offering is on Palm Beach’s Ocean Road, the impressive home of Hardie Grant Books chairman, and former Sydney Swans director, John Gerahty and wife Patricia. Despite not having the land size of its nearby record setters, it is expected to rival the Palm Beach record.

With a handy six car spaces, the Gerahty’s home sits on 965sq m that was part of the Deaton family’s Tropique property before it was subdivided. One of the parcels went to current Sydney Swans chairman and investment banker Andrew Pridham.

The Gerahty’s four-level home, completed last month by Cadence and Co, was a no-expense- spared build made the most of its north-facing position, with views to the Barrenjoey Lighthouse. Christie’s International agent Ken Jacobs calls it the pinnacle of Palm Beach.

Jacobs says the natural beauty of Palm Beach and the lack of apartment developments have ensured continued appeal.

He says buyers are divided between those who want the surf lifestyle and boating enthusiasts who prefer Pittwater.  

Jacobs agrees with Robinson, suggesting the Palm Beach market is not overly affected by the prices in Sydney.

“General economic conditions have more impact on the Palm Beach market than a direct correlation to what is happening in the Sydney market,” he says. “The single biggest indicator of the future strength of the Palm Beach market is the number of significant renovations and new homes being built on prime sites.”

There appears to be a little difference in time on market. Days on market siesta at 115 days in Palm Beach and 100 days in Portsea. However one of Portsea’s longest listings, occupying an enviable position on the Portsea clifftop, is Fleur sur la Mer, recently found a buyer after spending more than 400 days on the market.

The 1900s French Mediterranean home built for the Ford-Cain hotelier family with exposed beams and French parquetry flooring, has four bedrooms and a heated pool on 975sq m overlooking Weeroona Bay and Portsea Pier. Of course there are limestone walls and paving as it’s limestone at Portsea, sandstone at Palmy.

Portsea’s most expensive mansion has been Ilyuka, which former Computershare director Michele O’Halloran sold for $26 million in 2010 to John Higgins of Higgins Coatings, at a then Victorian house record. The Spanish Mission-style home was built in 1928-29 for oil executive Harry Conforth.

The Palm Beach record came in 2012 when car dealer Laurie Sutton bought Kalua for $22 million, although there was a higher transfer price – an internal Packer family transfer in 2015 at $24 million.

Kalua is a 1920s plantation-style beachfront trophy home on a 5500sq m dress circle block with a pool, tennis court and views of Cabbage Tree Boat Harbour. Sutton is the third owner. It was first sold by the Hordern retailing family to the Joye family for $330,000 in 1978. 

Kalua was one of the first homes in Palm Beach guaranteeing its historical significance. Folklore has it that the Hordern family sent their architect to Oahu, Hawaii, to copy “stick by stick and stone by stone” the impressive Dillingham plantation residence.

At the time of construction there were no roads into Palm Beach so all materials had to be brought in by barge from Newport.

Portsea recorded its first $1 million-plus sale in 1980 when property developer David Deague bought the Federation-era house Colwyn, once owned by the Baillieu family. It was 1981 at Palm Beach, when the late Kerry Packer bought his oceanfront.