Eastern suburbs dominate Title Tattle's list of Sydney's top 20 sales of the 2013-14 financial year
Title Tattle looks back at the past 12 months, compiling its traditional end of financial year review of prestige house sales across Sydney.
They topped out at around $38 million, with just over $11 million being required to feature on the list.
I discuss the trends elsewhere with Margie Blok on the regular He Said/She said column.
There's still mystery to prices and buyers, which await official settlements. Here's the interim list that Property Observer will update once it all comes to light.
The modernist Mosman waterfront home of Robert and Vassily Skinner fetched $11.06 million when sold last December to Gu Xun. It had been listed through Geoff Smith of LJ Hooker Mosman in conjunction with Nic Doig and Brendan Warner of Raine & Horne Mosman.
The Carrington Avenue property (pictured below) had $15 million price hopes when listed in August 2010 with other agents. Designed by Alexander Michael, the late 1980s four-bedroom residence sits on a 780 square metre block which cost $530,000 in 1983, and then built the house during the late 1980s.
The sale by Takashi Honjo in Vaucluse intrigues.
Designed by architectural firm Allan Jack + Cottier with interior design by Tim Allison Associates, the Vaucluse Road residence (pictured below) was bought in June 2012 for $11.7 million. It then quite quickly resold at $11.33 million to Akihiko Terada.
The house was best remembered as built by the Kariappa family on a 1080 square metre block with a tennis court and pool.
Last December David Crow spent $11.6 million for his mansion on Victoria Road, Bellevue Hill which was the home of the former Network Nine senior executive Lynton Taylor and his wife, Ros. The Taylors, who moved to a $10.5 million Darling Point apartment, had been their home since they bought it from Ron Doff in 2006.
Meanwhile the 1920s Beresford Road, Rose Bay home of Crow, the chief executive of British American Tobacco Australia, sold at just under $7.5 million.
Perhaps a little excitable were recent reports that well over $11 million was secured for the Bellevue Hill home of Jeremy Reid and his wife, Tammi. It probably should be on the list, but we will await the official settlement on the 2,100 square metre property Reid bought in 2005 for $9.25 million. It passed in at recent auction at $10.65 million.
There's also whispers that the Drumalbyn Road home of Peter Cosgrove, chairman of APN News and Media, sold for $11 million plus to Gary Symons, director of investment company Mariner Securities, and his wife, Jane Hewitt, who founded UniLodge in 1996, highlighting the re-emergence of the Bellevue Hill market.
Greg Clarke, who once headed Lend Lease, and his wife, Anne, paid $14.5 million for the Mosman harbour-front home of retired banker Ken Borda and his wife, Ellen in 2007.
Now London-based, the Clarkes have had the Curraghbeena Road, Mosman, house (pictured below) listed for sale on and off over the past four years. They always hoped to get their money back, though the listing agent Paul Gotch of Gotch Real Estate had been quoting $12 million-plus in 2010. Then on its 2012 listing it was noted it was paid for in British pounds when the exchange rate with the Australian dollar was much stronger.
So with no word of its sale price Title Tattle will make it at around $12 million, and conclude the currency transaction may have even meant the sale yielded a profit.
Kahala, the new Clareville waterfront four years in the making (pictured below), sold in the northern beaches' highest result of $12 million when bought in January by American William Samuel Fox III and his Australian-born wife Anne. The north facing 25 metre beachfront comes with tri-level home on its cascading 1,663 square metre Hudson Parade site.
There are views across the Pittwater to Lion and Scotland islands. At the water's edge it boasts boatshed with the sale including a 6.1 metre amphibious sealegs boat thrown in. It was listed through LJ Hooker Avalon agent David Watson and Christie's International agent Ken Jacobs. with property columnist Margie Blok writing its grounds came with a meditation hut and a pizza oven.
The property on Sydney's northern beaches peninsula had been listed at more than $12.5 million by David Desmarchelier, chief executive at Boartes Consulting, a security company that had contracts for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. Its 2007 purchase was $9.15 million.
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The scrap metal merchant Morgan Parker and his wife Bree-Annan spent around $12 million in Bellevue Hill.
It was the Rupertswood Avenue home (picture below) on 1,600 square metres of the merchant banker Stephen Chapman and his wife Deanne. It last traded at $2.6 million two decades ago.
It sold through Patrick Cosgrove of Raine & Horne Double Bay, and Michael Dunn of Richardson & Wrench Double Bay. The Parkers sold their Luigi Rosselli-designed home in Woollahra for $7.13 million.
One of the most recent sales was the new Hunters Hill riverfront record setter which was secured at $12.5 million for a six-bedroom Chevalier Crescent residence (location marked on the map below). The buyer is upgrading mining executive Yong Zhang from the Australian uranium explorer Zeus Resources.
The 1,690 square metre property within the Pulpit Point precinct was sold by the Tran family who bought it in 2002 for $5.35 million The prior Hunters Hill record stood at $10.68 million just next door when a home on 1,300 square metres was sold in 2007 by the Panzarino family, according to RP Data. The sale took place May 22.
Zhang and his wife Chun Feng Wu have owned another Hunters Hill waterfront home, five bedrooms on 784 square metres, which they bought on Mount Street for $4.19 million in 2007.
Source: Google Maps.
John Winning, former managing director of Winning Appliances, and his wife, Kerry, sold their Watsons Bay waterfront for more than $12.5 million, perhaps $13 million. The stylish beach house on Pacific Street had been home to the Winnings since 1992 when they paid $1.55 million to the Manettas family.
The four bedroom house with study (pictured below) sold through Elliott Placks of Ray White Double Bay and Wayne Yates, of Laing+Simmons Double Bay.
Title Tattle gleans it has been sold to the Ellis family whose wealth comes from mining.
Mosman's second highest sale of the financial year was to a Chinese buyer who paid $13.88 million for the Middle Harbour property (pictured below) sold by hedge fund trader Phil Mathews.
The four storey Julian Street offering (pictured below) was bought by a Shanghai businessman with children already in Sydney. It had last traded at $12.3 million when bought from one-time retirement village property developer Malcolm McLaurin, who'd Title Tattle recalls had set the then Middle Harbour waterfront record $8 million in 2001.
Last October it was bought by businessman Jeffrey Jin and his wife Jusu Yang.
Sydney FC chairman Scott Barlow's Point Piper waterfront house on Wolseley Road (pictured below) sold to the Chinese businessman Yunji Huang for $14.35 million.
Barlow had bought the Wolseley Road property from hotelier Damien Reed and his wife Genevieve in 2010 for $11.75 million. Barlow, who is the son-in-law of Sydney FC's billionaire owner David Traktovenko, added little to the property except securing approved plans by architect Alex Tzannes.
It was sold by Bill Malouf, of LJ Hooker Double Bay, and Julian Hasemer, of First City Hasemer+Caldwell Eyles.
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A three-storey Sydney School architecturally designed property positioned above the Bondi to Bronte coastal walk was on the market for the first time in 58 years.
Selling agent Blaise Griffin and Ric Serrao of Raine and Horne Double Bay secured $15 million for 23 Wilga Street, the 707-square-metre lot (pictured below).
The residence, with bagged and rustic brick walls and cathedral ceilings, was auctioned last October.
Vaucluse's highest sale price of the past 12 months was the off market $15 million paid for the former home of Izhar Ronen and his wife Jane.
No details yet on who has bought the six-bedroom house on 1,265 square metres next-door to Kincoppal-Rose Bay's junior school. It last traded in 1996 when bought from Nancy Melick, the former president of the Black and White Committee.
Juliet Clarke, wife of the former Investec chief executive David Clarke, sold their Michael Suttor-designed Point Piper home for $15.25 million.
The 1,453 square metre Wentworth Place property sold to Alex Toone, who made his name as Credit Suisse's Sydney-based managing director. The Clarkes had bought in 2001 for $5.8 million from the chairman of Investec, David Gonski, and his wife, dermatologist Orli Wargon who had paid $3 million in 1999.
The Clarkes didn't move far buying next door from the former stock broker John Bowie Wilson and his wife Sally for $8.8 million.
Mosman's highest result was in May when $15.6 million was paid by an undisclosed European family for a deep waterfront home on Carrington Avenue.
It was bought by the nominee company, Brehn Nominees which is directed by BMF's Stephen Jankelowitz, who manages the affairs of high income and high net wealth individuals.
It was the home of retired shipping executive Egil Paulson and his art collector wife Lisa at Quakers Hat Bay which was listed through Ray White Lower North Shore, Kingsley Yates.
The Paulsens' 1,764 square metre estate has a six-bedroom, five-bathroom house with a pool, boat shed, slipway and jetty. The house was completed in 1996, three years after the property cost $1.25 million.
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Matthew Koder, the expatriate Asia Pacific president at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, emerged as the $19 million buyer of the Bellevue Hill mansion, Donnington Grange (pictured below).
With its so-called classic neo-Georgian pedigree, it was among the freshest and priciest of Bellevue Hill listings. The Bank of America's head of Asia Pacific global corporate and investment was poached several years ago from UBS. Koder had started out at Goldman Sachs in the mid-1990s, after a commerce degree from the University of New South Wales with first class honors in finance. Koder's Hong Kong born wife Shanyan founded London's Hua Gallery of contemporary Chinese art.
It was 2005 when the late grocery tycoon Jim Fleming and his wife, Angela paid $16.5 million for the Bellevue Hill residence, a pricey sale at a time when a pall was evident over most of the Sydney market.
The 1,842-square metre Drumalbyn Road estate, with eight bedrooms, 10-bathroom house and 10-car underground garaging, was sold through LJ Hooker agent Bill Malouf and Sophie Beaumont, in conjunction with Sydney Sotheby's International. It was built for the Rubenstein family before its sale to the Flemings.
Rovello, the 1937 residence designed by Wilson, Neave and Berry, the leading architectural firm of the 1920s and 1930s era, sold for around $20 million.
With still no word on its buyer. The SMH wrongly pinpointed a builder as the buyer, but it's not him.
Set on the highest point of Bellevue Hill and facing north over Sydney Harbour, Rovello was built for Dr Vincent Flynn and wife, Jean Flynn, a great-niece of George Adams, the founder of Tattersall’s Sweepstake. A trust fund established some years after the 1881 introduction of Tattersall’s sweepstake generated vast wealth for the Adams family.
Flynn chose a site on Ginahgulla Road, considered one of the suburb’s finest streets, as the location for her new home. And then she commissioned Wilson, Neave and Berry to design the house in the colonial Georgian revival style favoured by Hardy Wilson who was the company’s leading architect. Apparently, Flynn requested the architects to design the house to somewhat resemble Barford.
Rovello remained in the hands of Flynn’s family until it was bought by the property developer John Lyons who sold it in the mid-1980s to the merchant banker James Yonge for $3.45 million in 1986. Yonge sold it for $8.24 million in 1991 through eastern suburbs estate agent Jane Ashton to the current owners, Michael Darling and his wife Manuela Darling-Gansser.
Centred around a courtyard modelled on the colonnaded Roman atriums, the house stands on more than 2,800 square metres of grounds with a tennis court, swimming pool, sweeping lawns and sun-drenched terraces. From the property are panoramic northerly views to Manly and The Heads, as well as westerly views to the Harbour Bridge.
Echoing its Mediterranean name, the traditional Italian-style villa has two wings enclosing a large pergola and an enclosed loggia. Howard Tanner oversaw its last renovation. The exercise area and steam room was added in the last five years designed by architect Nick Tobias. Its Mediterranean style are the gardens were re-designed in 2006 by leading landscape architect, Myles Baldwin. With price expectations around $20 million, Rovello (pictured below) sold in April through Ray White Double Bay agents, Elliott Placks and Ashley Bierman, on delayed settlement terms, with the price and buyer yet to emerge.
Addenbrooke, the stately Bellevue Hill trophy home (pictured below), was purchased by the property developer Bob Ell, from the downsizing vendors, Denis and Charlotte O'Neil through Sydney Sotheby's International Realty agent Michael Pallier at $28 million.
Addenbrooke had last traded at its 1988 auction for $5.375 million having been the home of the late Sir Lionel Coppleson, the former hire purchase Custom Credit c0-founding chairman, for close to five decades.
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The Simon family sold their vast concrete Point Piper harbourfront trophy home (pictured below) for around $28.5 million, some eight years after the initial listing.
The 933 square metre Point Piper property last sold in 1996 when the estate of the late FAI chairman Larry Adler secured $12 million from Peter Simon and his wife, Ruth, owners of the light-switch business HPM Industries, then Australia's 99th largest private company with its $170 million annual revenue. Adler's widow, Ethel had decided to stay in their Vaucluse residence which was bought in 1963 for 17,850 pounds. Mr Adler had built after he bought the Wolseley Road block in early 1988 for $5.1 million from Westfield supremo Frank Lowy.
Frank Lowy had paid $2.675 million for it three years earlier then obtaining permission for a new residence. The property title is in the name of Marion Richmond, following the death of her parents, Peter, then Ruth Simon. The vast five-level concrete house now stands in the most verdant patch of Wolseley Road, neighbouring Duff Reserve, a popular fishing location.
The six-bedroom, nine-bathroom waterfront, with boatshed, pontoon and electric winch, has Gergely & Pinter Architects-design origins. David Singh has been tipped as its likely buyer.
The price of the late Sir William Tyree’s long-held Darling Point waterfront property (pictured below) was $32 million when bought by the yatchtie Matt Allen.
The Lindsay Avenue property comes with 1800 square metres of land and a 600 square metre leasehold water frontage. It's next door to Glanworth owned by media tycoon Kerry Stokes, who was tipped as a likely buyer. The property had been owned by Sir William Tyree since July 1967, when he bought it for $170,000 from the estate of Margaret McAurlach Wirth of the Wirth Circus family. It took four years to build the five-bedroom house inspired by the designs of Frank Lloyd Wright.
Matt Allen, a veteran of more than 20 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Races, is currently seeking $17 million for his Bellevue Hill abode, Yoorami through Savill's agent Martin Schiller. Originally built in the 1920s, Yoorami comes with restorative work by architect Michael Suttor with interiors by Thomas Hamel.
It was 1996 when the then Potter Warburg executive Matt Allen spent $5.65 million to buy the Yoorami Estate in Bellevue Hill from the barrister Geraldine Vandeleur, wife of silk Charles Sweeney.
Matt Allen's most famous Sydney to Hobart skippering has been of Ichi Ban, which has variously been a Sydney 38 OD, a Farr 40 OD and a Jones 70 ocean racer. He is the former Cruising Yacht Club of Australia commodore. Sir William Tyree was the founder of a 1940s electrical transformer manufacturing company.
SummitCare Australia aged-care boss Peter Wohl has been pinpointed as the buyer of Ron Medich's Point Piper waterfront mansion. It sold for around $38 million earlier this month.
Peter Wohl and his wife Jennifer have a clifftop residence in Dover Heights, bought in 1993 from the France-bound, Southern belle, art critic, heiress Sandra McGrath.
The Savills International agent Martin Schiller secured the sale through listing agents Ken Jacobs of Christie's International and Bill Malouf of LJ Hooker Double Bay.
While the Wolseley Road property was quietly listed in February 2011 with ambitious $55 million hopes, the price guide was subsequently revised down to offers of more than $40 million.
The four level house which was redesigned by architect David Katon after the Medichs bought the property for $15.15 million in July 2003 from restaurateur Wolfie Pizem.
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