Warrawee and Wahroonga in upper north shore trophy home name change sales see-saw

Last spring's trophy listing on the upper north shore, Kooyong at Warrawee sold with the settlement price showing at $7.85 million through Christies International agent Darren Curtis.

Kooyong (pictured above) is the historic Warrawee mansion on 9,000 square metres that last traded for $6.35 million in late 2008 when bought by the chief financial Officer of Sirius Minerals, Jason Murray, and his wife, Danni.

It has been bought by the Hitchcock-Gransier family who sold through LJ Hooker's Robert Ward for $4.1 million in Lindfield late last year, but who still own at Dee Why. It's Francois Hitchcock and Jackie Gransier.

Kooyong is estimated as still ranking as the area's largest estates, and unquestionably one of its most historically significant properties given the 1895 mansion was designed by architect Sir John Sulman. Kooyong, originally named Upton Grey, was built for the prominent flour milling industrialist Gillespie family, who lived there until 1917 when the property sold to William Henry Locke, the general manager of Royal Exchange Assurance of London, who renamed it Kooyong.

The sale is not however a suburb record which has stood as $11.5 million since 2010 when mining magnate Jerry Ren bought Bremon, the mansion once known as Pantugeul. Ren is the controlling shareholder in the privately owned Australian Oil and Gas, which has mining rights over close to 300,000 square kilometres - nearly a fifth of the Northern Territory.

But Title Tattle is now aware there has apparently been a new suburb record in neighbouring Wahroonga of about $9.2 million. It's a house that likewise has had a name change over the years.

It's Wairimu the 1927 five-bedroom, 3228-square-metre Water Street home (pictured below) with tennis court and pool. It was sold by the veteran expatriate television executive Steve Askew and his wife, Cressida after being listed for two years with $11 million hopes presumably on top of it having an amazing - and befitting - home cinema.

Our Estates agent Adam Regan secured the sale of the six-bedroom property with the buyer being a senior executive from an accounting firm in China.

The Wahroonga estate previously had traded in 2007 for $5.2 million, when it was bought some 18 months after its listing by the hotelier Courtney-O'Connor family.

It had traded in 1991 when the Courtney-O'Connor family bought it for $2.5 million.

Property Observer columnist Margie Blok says she knew the property originally as the Penman Residence, designed by Hugh Venables Vernon. It's also been known as Broadlands. And the Wairimu name stems from "wai" meaning "by the water" in Maori and rimu is a New Zealand tree.

The veteran television executive Askew was chief operating Officer for News Corp Star TV in Asia, then turning his craft to co-producing movies with Jackie Chan and Andy Lau. The latest Wahroonga sale bettered a late 2013 spring sale on Burns Road through Christies agent Darren Curtis which briefly held the suburb record at $7.5 million.

In 1928, Locke sold Kooyong to barrister Horace Markell, QC, who owned it until the late 1940s when the Australian federal government bought it for the Department of Social Services as a rehabilitation centre.

In 1978, Kooyong was transferred to the CSIRO.

In 1986, shortly after the NSW government imposed an interim conservation order, the property sold for $2.3 million to Knox Grammar School.

Title Tattle recalls in 2001 Knox Grammar abandoned plans to develop it into a boarding school. There were sheep that grazed on the then prestigious 12,500 square metre property which Knox had been using in agricultural study classes.

For more than 10 years residents of Hastings Road and Pibrac Avenue led by Ian Londish had objected to any development, and while the school eventually won development approval in 1997, it decided after a spending priorities review that the boarding facilities could be provided elsewhere at a significantly lower cost.

When Knox sold the Hastings Road property to the Cahill family for $5.7 million in 2002 the grand house and its outbuildings were in a state of extreme disrepair.

Subsequently, two blocks of land were subdivided from the estate.

In December 2008, the Cahills then sold Kooyong for $6.35 million to Jason Murray, who is the chief financial Officer of Sirius Minerals, and his interior designer wife, Danni.

The Murrays renovated even adding a private pub in one of the three outbuildings.