Developers hiding in plain sight: Battle for the future of Southern Highlands

In April 2020, Roger and Jenny Manning welcomed at their front door a couple who they felt certain would make the perfect buyers for their lovingly restored Southern Highlands home.

Built by the locally renowned Alf Stephens in 1927, “Karingal” occupied more than 3000 square metres close to the centre of Moss Vale, surrounded by extensive gardens that the Mannings had spent years returning to their original splendour.

Roger Manning says his wife has been “inconsolable” since she discovered a developer’s plan for their former home.Credit: Kate Geraghty

The mother of the man now standing at the door lived on acreage nearby. As Mr Manning tells it, the couple envisaged staying in the house when they came to visit her on weekends. As they toured its rooms, they cooed over the Mannings’ sympathetic renovation and remarked that it reminded them of their first home.

When they got up to leave, the wife looked out the window and spotted a potting shed in the garden. “I just love that,” she said, according to Manning. “My mum and I will enjoy using it.”

They did not see the wife again. The Mannings agreed to sell their property to the couple for $1.75 million, but deep into their 12-month settlement period they became aware that the buyer’s true plans for the block included a subdivision and eight new townhouses to be pressed cheek-by-jowl with the landmark residence.

The husband, it turned out, worked for an international property developer.

In the formerly sleepy Southern Highlands, the sale of Karingal has become a flashpoint for growing anxiety about a post-pandemic population boom, the subsequent rise in property prices and new developments that are perceived to be out of step with the country charm that drew people to the area in the first place.

Following a community outcry, Wingecarribee Shire Council last week placed an interim heritage order over Karingal and two other houses in Bowral slated for demolition. But it faces a challenge to create enough affordable housing to meet demand, without placing undue burden on infrastructure.

In late 2019, the population for the area was projected to grow by just 5 per cent between 2016 and 2041, with a decrease in the number of people of working age. But the pandemic prompted a mass migration to the area by Sydneysiders looking for a lifestyle change. On Wednesday, the estimate was revised to predict a 27 per cent growth in population by 2041, spreading across all age groups.

“They were the fastest out-of-date projections ever,” said Michael Park, manager of strategic land use planning. Council is developing a new framework with clearer guidelines around heritage conservation areas.

“It’s a fine balancing act. We know that our population is growing fairly quickly and we know that our current housing stock doesn’t meet the needs of the community. We have an ageing population so we need to be able to provide housing around our town centres, but do that in a way that’s in keeping with community expectations.”

As demand has risen, so too have property prices — by about 26 per cent over the 2020-21 financial year.

A 109-hectare property at Burradoo sold for close to $50 million last month, with the buyer betting on the government agreeing to rezone the land from rural to residential. Two weeks ago, the first 80 blocks in a new development south of Moss Vale sold in under three hours, for a combined $40 million.

Local radio broadcaster Graeme Day tells of his neighbour who recently put a For Sale sign up on a 2000 square metre Moss Vale block and received 178 inquiries in the first 72 hours.

But the high prices have raised the stakes for those who pay top dollar. Mr Day said it had long been council policy to develop areas that were already built up and preserve agricultural land. But that inevitably meant subdividing the large blocks in town.

“We’ve got a lot of older blocks with large houses on them,” Mr Day said. “When people buy these particular houses, they buy them as homes and pay $2-2.5 million in places like Bowral. And then you realise that a developer has bought the place behind and the big sprawling place that gives the place its character is going to be turned into units.”

The influx of cashed up Sydneysiders and the upward pressure on prices has stoked divisions and unease about the changing character of the district, he said. Some of the lifelong locals took exception to well-known Sydneysiders moving to the district and throwing their weight around in local politics.

“I’ve been broadcasting in this area for 37 years and it’s the most diabolical I’ve ever seen it.”

Nicole Smith, who will stand for local council next year on a ticket backed by high-profile Sydney migrants including media widow and charity doyenne Skye Leckie, celebrity hairdresser Joh Bailey and billionaire couple Mike and Annie Cannon-Brookes, said it was a positive development that younger families were moving to the area. “So it’s not saying ‘No development’, it’s saying, ‘Just do it well’.”

It will be up to the NSW government whether to extend the heritage order on Karingal. The man who agreed to buy it from Mr Manning sold his option to his former business partner a month before the property exchanged. He categorically denied Mr Manning’s version of events, but declined to comment further.

Mr Manning said he had always known part of the block might be subdivided, but he had no idea of the scope of what was proposed until it was presented to himself and his wife in February this year. And for him, the matter is personal. Each of the three houses that the Mannings have owned since moving to NSW from South Australia in the late 1970s, they purchased as a tired property and left in a happier state.

“That’s what we thought was happening with ‘Karingal’,” Mr Manning said.

“My wife has been inconsolable ever since.”

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