A cold headwind blows into Sydney's prestige housing market

A run of ultra-prestige house sales this week should be good news for trophy home owners, but agents fear it’s the first sign of a cold headwind blowing in their rarefied market.

Sydney’s harbourside home values have remained largely immune to price falls this year thanks to a shortfall in the number of suitably luxurious homes to meet demand.

And while agents say there are still plenty of buyers at trophy home levels, it is vendors who are no longer willing to wait it out for the right price.

“I’m telling people to get out before Christmas because we don’t know what the market will be like when it returns in February and March,” said Bill Malouf, of LJ Hooker Double Bay.

With that in mind, Mr Malouf is listing double-digit homes in the east’s harbourside neighbourhoods well into November in a bid to sell them before the market closes in mid-December.

Fuelling turnover in the last months of the year is a shift away from off-market sales that favour the vendor to public marketing campaigns.

“I’m moving away from off-market deals because there’s a timeline attached [to the marketing] and it forces a decision on both buyers and sellers,” said Ben Collier of The Agency.

Elliott Placks, of Ray White Double Bay, said only about 5 per cent of the agency’s sales were off-market this year compared with about 20 per cent last year.

Among the top sales this week ranging from $17 million to almost $20 million is the Vaucluse mansion owned by London-based founder of Reddam House Graeme Crawford and his partner Ian McLeod.

Mr Malouf declined to reveal the sale price, but sources say it sold for about $17 million after a week on the market to Balmain financial services group chief executive Andrew Griffin.

On Vaucluse’s Wentworth Road, the grand Federation mansion of the late Helen and Andrew Andrews, who established The Latin Quarter nightclub in the 1950s, has sold for between $19.5 million and its $20 million guide through Sotheby’s Michael Pallier.

Listed almost two years ago, it received an offer through Mr Malouf of $20.4 million last year but the deal fell through when the buyer from China was unable to access their funds.

Property investor Richard Scheinberg listed his Bellevue Hill home for more than $16 million a week ago given his recent purchase of the nearby Rona estate for almost $60 million.

Laing + Simmons’ Bart Doff and Steven Zoellner were unable to discuss the sale or buyer details but sources say it sold for more than $17 million to fashion designer-turn-food blogger Stephanie Conley-Buhre and her husband, venture capitalist Oskar Buhre.

In the east’s oceanfront suburbs there’s no such cool change, said Alexander Phillips, of Phillips Pantzer Donnelley, who sold a contemporary beachside house in Bronte on Wednesday for more than $11 million.

“There were five buyers on that property all offering more than $10 million,” said Mr Phillips.