BHP Billiton's Carolyn Hewson sells up in Vaucluse: Title Tattle
BHP Billiton director Carolyn Hewson, recently ranked as Australia’s most influential female board director, has sold her Vaucluse house for $4.5 million. It had been her Sydney abode since she had paid $4.1 million in 2005. Its sale price reflected just 1.65% annual growth. It has been bought by the Zhang family.
Hewson was ranked as Australia’s most powerful female director in a recent Australian Financial Review survey given she has board seats on BHP Billiton, Westpac, Stockland and BT Investment Management. It is understood she has decided to rent in the Potts Point precinct.
The resort-like Mona Vale beachfront residence of the veteran property developer Max Delmege and his wife, Narelle, has failed to sell on its third mortgagee auction marketing campaign. The house (pictured above) comes with $5 million-plus hopes having failed to sell in October 2010 with $7 million hopes. The two-level Surfview Road house on an 870-square-metre block was constructed by the former Manly Warringah Sea Eagles powerbroker, who bought the block for $750,000 and rebuilt the house in 2009, after which it secured a $9 million valuation.
The jeweller Robert Clerc has listed his much-expanded 1830s Double Bay residence (pictured above and below) for August 30 auction. Known as Mort’s Cottage, its expected to sell for about $6 million. It's one of Double Bay's earliest homes and is named after its longtime owner the pioneer pastoralist entrepreneur Thomas Mort, a former lord mayor of Sydney. The original sandstone Gothic Revival-style house was actually built for tea dealer Samuel Peek, with Mort buying it in 1848.
It has been recently extended with a modern addition of glass and steel designed by Thomas Jacobsen architects. Set on the busy corner of Ocean Avenue and Cross Street, the residence has five bedrooms and three bathrooms. It last traded in 2005 at $3.02 million.
Title Tattle has been around long enough to remember that Mort’s Cottage was listed in late 1987 just as the stock market crashed, so was auctioned again in March 1988 with $900,000 hopes. It finally sold in 1989 when bought by Greg and Sandy Pearce for $1,225,000.
Clerc this week expressed confidence that he’d find a buyer in quick time. “I think our house is pretty special. It’s probably the oldest house in the eastern suburbs. I really believe it’s the right time to sell it,” he told the Australian Financial Review. The convict-built house first sold for the equivalent of 53 pounds.
The land was originally bought for 26 pounds, five shillings by the ex-convict John Towell. In the late 1980s Mort’s Cottage was the subject of a book by Jill Buckland looking at Sydney society through the eyes of the men and women who owned the house. She wrote on John Tawell, the Quaker convict who arrived in Sydney as a convict in 1815 and left in 1838 in a blaze of glory with a fortune of 200,000 pounds. Back in England he poisoned an inconvenient mistress and died on the gallows in 1845, having been arrested at Paddington Station as a result of the despatch of a signal by the newly nstalled Electro Magnetic Telegraph.
The Bellevue Hill home of Howard Sacre, the foreign correspondant with Channel Nine's 60 Minutes, and his wife, Margaret, has been sold pre-auction. The house (pictured above) had been listed with hopes of more than $3 million through Ballard Property agents Clint Ballard and Bill Bridges. Set close to Cooper Park, the Suttie Road property last traded for $1.9 million in 2001.
The Sacres' four-bedroom double-fronted residence has an elegant dining room and a living room with French doors opening to a veranda and large terraced garden with a pool. In 1992, Brisbane-born Sacre joined the Nine Network in Sydney as a producer with Mike Willesee before moving to 60 Minutes in 1994. The Sacres are downsizing.
The author Helen Cummings has listed her house at The Hill, the Newcastle suburb. Cummings is the mother of US-based actress Sarah Wynter. Her six-year-old High Street house has been listed through Mike Flook of Robinson Property given her plans to move into a nearby apartment she has secured off-the-plan in the Grand Central building. Cummings recently published Blood Vows, the story of her earlier marriage to a violent doctor and the domestic abuse she suffered at his hands.
Avondale, the Illingworth family's waterfront home in Gladesville (pictured above), remains listed for sale. Its had $6.5 million plus hopes through McGrath Hunters Hill agent Tracey Dixon on its initial April listing. Built in 1888, it was renovated in 1993 and 2009. Set on 2,141 square metres, the riverfront property comes with vast lawns that roll down to a private sandy beach with views across Looking Glass Bay.
The grandly proportioned Victorian residence was built by Edwin Sandys Lumsdaine, the husband of Banjo Paterson's sister, Rose Florence Paterson. Edwin, a solicitor, was the son of Reverend William Lumsdaine, the rector of Christ Church, Gladesville. Being religious, Edwin had a small chapel built within the house which is now used as a study. In full view from this property is an 1830s sandstone cottage, Rockend which was the home of Banjo Paterson's grandmother and as a young man, the iconic bush poet lived there with her. The highest recorded house price in Gladesville was $6.1 million for another Wharf Road house in February 2008.
Title Tattle aims to tell you as soon as its known - and sometimes before - so the word from Perth is that The Cliffe (pictured above), one of the first residential dwellings built in the Perth suburb of Peppermint Grove, is to be sold this spring. The Bindaring Parade bungalow that dates back to the 1890s has been through the heritage hoops for most of the time of its ownership by mining entreprenuer Mark Creasy.
The original owner of The Cliffe was Neil McNeil, who purchased the land in 1892 - only one year after Peppermint Grove was surveyed into building allotments. McNeil was one of the owners of the Jarrahdale Timber Company, which exported timber for the paving of London Streets. In 1995 following a petition from residents the Heritage Council of Western Australia issued a conservation order under Section 59 of the Heritage of Western Australia Act 1990. Just days later it was sold to the Creasy family for $2.7 million. They have contested the listing for nine years.
The Creasys have estimated that the dispute has cost them $225,000 in legal fees and claim that the house is now uninhabitable, estimating it would cost at least $2.8 million to make it liveable and much more to renovate it completely. Offers are due by September 9 with Chris Shellabear at Shellabears.
And don't say Title Tattle told you, but it was headhunter Julia Ross who last year knocked back a $40 million plus offer for her Point Piper non-waterfront. The matter was alluded to in the local press last weekend with Bill Malouf from LJ Hooker Double Bay spilling only a few details, but not the stay-put vendor's name. Malouf of course was responsible for the $53 million sale just across Wolseley Road when he sold Villa Venuto, a five-storey waterfront mansion.
