Catcha Group chief and co-founder Patrick Grove was not on hand to inspect the Darling Point house he purchased in 2017 for $28 million, but bought it anyway knowing it was to be demolished and rebuilt as his forever home.
But no sooner have the finishing touches been added to the waterfront house than the internet entrepreneur is still not here to take up residence, and is instead still based in Singapore, where he recently added the role of company chairman to his bow.
If six years is a long time in the fortunes of our tech class, it’s even longer in Sydney’s trophy home market where an expensive site acquisition, no-expense-spared build and good dose of inflation have prompted a $70 million guide by exclusive listing agents Michael Pallier and Francis Egan, of Sotheby’s.
Grove’s purchase of the 669-square metre property in 2017 ended almost 40 years of ownership by the Meagher family, headed by the late hotelier, Alan Meagher.
The DA to demolish and rebuild it to a design by Polly Harbison architecture firm was approved two years later, with landscaping by Dangar Barin Smith and an excavated cellar approved more recently.
The parkside residence joins the trophy home shelf just as another is removed: the Point Piper home of businessman Simon Ehrlich and Rebecca Lacey sold last week for $69 million.
Grove won’t be without a crash pad for his visits back to Sydney, however. In 2020, records show he purchased a sandstone cottage on the Balmain East waterfront for $6.8 million.
Bronte blue-blood
On such a significant weekend on the regal calendar thanks to the coronation of King Charles III, it is perhaps fitting to launch the sales campaign on the Bronte home of His Majesty’s family friend, Lady Marina Dawson-Damer.
PPD’s Alexander Phillips has been giving buyers a guide of $5.5 million for the three-bedroom apartment ahead of a May 27 auction.
The London-based Dawson-Damer is the daughter of the seventh Earl of Portarlington, George Dawson-Damer, and has owned the ground floor of the triplex opposite Bronte Park since 2008, paying $3.575 million for it new.
Oh Boy conversion
Renovation queen Cherie Barber is looking to well and truly cash in on the property boom of recent years, listing her designer converted warehouse in Lilyfield for $9 million.
This is the landmark residence for whom the designer credentials go-to architect Virginia Kerridge, who was commissioned to redesign what was once the Oh Boy Candy lolly factory by comedian and radio presenter Merrick Watts and his wife, Georgina.
While Barber’s investment prowess usually comes from her renovation skills, she has resisted the urge this time, instead capitalising on the property as a regular short-term holiday rental, and a capital gain on her $6.2 million purchase price of early 2020.
At the time Watts listed it — just weeks after COVID-19 touched down in Australia but before lockdowns and border closures became familiar events — he had a $7 million guide, understandably given the residence had won two RAIA Awards following its 2012 completion.
BresicWhitney’s Shannan Whitney and Chris Nunn have the listing.
Taxing motivations
Award-winning film and TV composer Antony Partos secured his hoped-for $6 million for his Potts Point terrace when it went to auction this week thanks to the efforts of three registered buyers.
Partos, who purchased it with his Supersonic music production house partners in 2007, sold it through Richardson & Wrench’s Jason Boon, given soaring land tax valuations locally.
Also coming out of the week richer are socialite and interior designer Sally Tilley and financier Adam Tilley, thanks to the sale of their Woollahra home for what a source says is about $8 million.
It was previously home to Dominique Ogilvie and prominent art dealer Tim Olsen, and still features a mosaic in the light well by Olsen’s late father, acclaimed artist John Olsen.
Ogilvie sold it to the Tilleys in 2014 for $4.11 million, and it was listed with Ray White’s Randall Kemp, who declined to reveal the result.
Towering results
Property magnate Jackie Waterhouse has purchased another apartment in the Quay West tower at The Rocks for $10 million.
The daughter of the late property tycoon, Ray Fitzpatrick, set a record for the building, which had long been the Sydney home of comic genius Barry Humphries, who died last month.
Modernist love
Netballer and co-founder of women’s outdoor training program The Squad Co, Emily Keenan, has listed her Killara home she shares with WINIM’s Josh Leahy for $12 million with Ray White Upper North Shore’s Ben Cohen.
This is the modernist house built in the 1970s by the late architect, Ken Woolley, for the Eastment family, who sold it to Keenan in 2019 for $4.1 million.
The New South Wales government placed an interim heritage order on it in 2020, and Keenan has modernised the interiors since thanks to designer Elissa Griffin.
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald