Sale of Greg Kay and Trish Knight’s waterfront Battery Point house may smash record for the suburb

IT has featured on Grand Designs and in the Wall Street Journal and may add a new feather to its bow.

Greg Kay in front of his Battery Point house he is selling

IT has featured on Grand Designs Australia, in the Wall Street Journal and been the winner of several architecture awards and may now add a new feather to its bow.

This transformed home could break the record for a stand-alone house in prestigious Battery Point.

Listed for $5.5 million, Greg Kay and Trish Knight’s waterfront home has garnered interest locally and abroad and is now looking for a new owner.

The pair restored and renovated the original 1860s cottage and added a concrete and glass extension at the back, linking the two with a walkway. There is a heated lap pool and expansive double-glazed windows overlooking the river, plus feature walls, doors and other finishings made from salvaged celery top pine and Tasmanian oak.

But this was never the plan in the beginning, Mr Kay says.

“We had planned to restore the cottage, sell it and build a small place on the foreshore,” he said.

“We had all the plans approved but a neighbour objected to that and we lost the appeal so we had to redesign to link the two buildings. I wanted to do it right. I didn’t want to have a place on the foreshore and not do it justice.”

The views stretch right down the Derwent. Picture: JASON BUSCH

Mr Kay said he would greatly miss the minimalist contemporary residence.

“This house has everything in it you’d ever want in a house and I imagine what I’m going to won’t, but it will be smaller and less capital-intensive,” he said.

Real Estate Institute of Tasmania research officer Dustin Crayford said the highest recorded sale for a Battery Point house on their records was $3 million from June 2004.

“Typically properties that are of this amount don’t always get disclosed by either the vendor or purchaser,” he said.

Hobart’s most expensive property, Waimea House in Sandy Bay, sold for $8.5 million in 2011.

Inside the minimalist contemporary residence. Picture: JASON BUSCH