Collette Dinnigan flips Southern Highlands homestead for $7.25m after 18 months

Collette Dinnigan made her name as an international fashion designer, but she’s making a fortune by flipping high-end property.

In the two years since Dinnigan turned her designer eye to interiors, she has bought and sold more than $33 million worth of luxury weekender and Sydney real estate, the most recent of which is the sale of her Southern Highlands home Springfield Farm for $7.25 million – 18 months after she bought it.

The sandstone residence with tennis court, stables, lake, two barn-style dwellings and groundskeeper’s cottage last traded in the final weeks of 2016 for $4.5 million, sold by barrister Stephen Flett and his wife, Di, after more than a year on the market.

Records show that after a makeover it was bought by interior designer Kinchem Hegedus, wife of property veteran Peter Barge, amid talk it was sold by John Renouf, of Drew Lindsay Real Estate.

The local rumour mill says Dinnigan and her husband, Bradley Cocks, have already bought another property, paying about $3.5 million for 1880s Bowral weatherboard residence Alderley Edge. The Rome-based couple were yet to respond to calls this week.

Dinnigan’s foray into interior design began in 2016 began when she was commissioned to do the interiors for the Surry Hills development Golf House, followed by a range of wallpapers for Porters Paints a few months later.

But her own property flipping has proved lucrative, kicked off by the $9 million sale two years ago of her Watsons Bay property.

Dinnigan renovated the former Masonic Temple in Watsons Bay with help from her creative director brother Seamus. She bought it 18 months earlier for $6.25 million from James Packer’s then-sidekick Matthew Csidei.

A few months after the Watsons Bay sale, Dinnigan ploughed $2,225,000 back into the property market by buying a Victorian terrace in Paddington and a month later added another Paddington property bought from brother Seamus for $1,925,000.

A $7 million Federation house in Darling Point followed in May last year, expected to be yet another offering on her boutique tourism operation, Dinnigan Cocks Bespoke Homes, when it launches later this year.

Dinnigan’s long-held South Coast weekender in Milton, the White House, is expected to join her stable of high-end holiday homes, but not the Milton Surf and Stables she owned next door to it after it was sold late last year for $2.1 million to publican Peter Wadsworth.

In February, she bought a beachside weekender further south in Rosedale for $950,000, and sold the shop in Paddington where she launched her career for about $1.6 million, having bought it in 1998 for $625,000.

Betty Klimenko’s home deal

Heiress Betty Klimenko, daughter of the late Westfield co-founder John Saunders, and her son, film producer and writer Anthony Salamon, have sold their Vaucluse property for more than $5 million.

The three-storey residence near Parsley Bay was near-new when it last traded for $4 million in 2007 from former eBay Australia executive Stephen Knowles and his wife, Kaye. It was left to sources to reveal the sale price given no comment from Blaise Griffin, of Pillinger.