Film producer turned developer Rebel Penfold-Russell selling six North Bondi apartments for $5.5 million-plus each
The film producer turned passionate property developer Rebel Penfold-Russell has listed six prestige apartments in her North Bondi development, Coast.
The six near-beachfront apartments each come with $5.5 million plus asking prices - and there's a video uploaded to youtube on the construction of the Ramsgate Avenue project with music by her son, Emrys Quin.
Coast, on the Ben Buckler North Bondi headland, has been recently completed, the first new apartment project in 40 years on the iconic Ben Buckler Bondi Headland.
It comes with three-bedroom-plus apartments over four levels to a SJB Architects design. One Bondi Beach regular who witnessed the construction stage from "pull? down slum block to giant hole in the ground to the building phoenix rising" says it is a wonderful building that "salutes Bondi's vision."
''Bondi's buildings all used to be salt-encrusted, rundown old buildings with broken wiring and concrete cancer, with very few good restaurants around,'' Penfold-Russell told Fairfax Media.
''But it's smartening up, not in a pompous exclusive way, but it now has a lot more good property, great retail and fabulous restaurants.
''Bondi is so vibrant and vital, it's exuberant with a youthful feel, it's magnificent.
''There's everything you want to eat there as well as drink, and there's great retail in lovely little enclaves," she said.
The block cost $6.05 million in 2007 inaddition to the initial holding that cost $3.85 million in 2004.
Davis Langdon prepared a 2010 cost estimate which concluded at a total capital investment value of $10,502,989 summarised as follows:
Demolition & Hazardous Materials removal $137,687
Site Preparation (incl Bulk Excavation) $73,510
Site Services $80,000
New Construction $6,097,582
External Works $189,223
Roadworks Excluded
Design Contingency $391,391
Preliminaries & Supervision $1,249,820
Sub-total – Construction Works $8,219,213
Statutory Fees Excluded
Design & Management Fees $650,000
Development Management Fees $150,000
Construction Contingency $391,391
Escalation (to completion – say end 2013) $792,385
Selling & Marketing Costs $300,000
Finance Costs Excluded
Sub-total – Applicable Development Costs $2,283,776
TOTAL ESTIMATED CIV $10,502,989
Its been a rental investment in recent years through McGrath who will also be its upcoming sales marketing agents.
The project included the now demolished 160 Ramsgate Avenue, a two storey building containing eight units, with no on-site parking provisions, and on the northern side, 158 Ramsgate Avenue where there was a two and three storey building containing five units and parking for three cars.
The filmmaker, who lived in Double Bay as a teenager, then Potts Point has made her permanent family home at North Bondi since the late 1980s. She'd bought an apartment at Bondi Beach while studying at NIDA in the 1970s for about $52,000.
Property Observer was there at the 1988 auction when the interior decorator Ann Gyngell and advertising executive Jamie Packer, as he was then known, accepted a $1.51 million offer at the W.J.Bridges auction of their Ramsgate Avenue, Bondi Beach, spec investment property which is now a contemporary abode.
The vendors were family friends - her husband Bruce Gyngell and his father, media tycoon Kerry Packer kicked off television in Australia - who had bought it for$1.15 million less than a year prior to the August 1988 auction.
Theo Onisforou and Richard Eskell dropped out of the auction bidding, and the battle emerged between the Double Bay newsagent Allan Stevens and Penfold-Russell, who was represented by Goodhope Realty's John McGrath.
As the price moved to 1988 boom levels, Jamie celebrated with a few chocolate biscuits laid on by the estate agency.
Penfold-Russell triumphed on the day, and has been a passionate advocate for Bondi ever since.