Ex-UBS banker David Di Pilla buys $9m house next door for Bellevue Hill compound

There is no shortage of family compounds in Bellevue Hill, and another is taking shape thanks to the recent purchase of former UBS star banker David Di Pilla and his wife Victoria, of the wealthy Salteri family.

Di Pilla, who is founder and director of Aurrum Aged Care group and chairman of ASX-listed property investment group Home Consortium, has been a Bellevue Hill home owner for more than a decade, having bought the Kambala Road mansion that was home to the late designer Mark Keighery until he died in 2008. Records show that residence was sold by Keighery’s widow Lisa in 2009 for $9 million.

Meanwhile, when Keighery died the house next door on a far smaller 500 square metres with a colonnaded facade was purchased for just shy of $4 million by the daughter of Rich Lister Robert Whyte, Arabella Rayner and her husband, F45 director Damien Rayner.

The Rayners’ two-storey residence was listed with Pillinger’s Brad Pillinger late last year with $9 million hopes, but was mysteriously withdrawn from the market in February.

At the time sources told Domain it was bought by a local buyer, but just how local remained a mystery until settlement in recent days.

The Di Pilla family’s purchase for $9 million effectively expands their double block to create a 1600-square-metre parcel with a second residence.

Among Bellevue Hill’s most notable family compounds are those formed by the media dynasties like the Murdochs and Packers.

The Packer family’s Cairnton estate took generations to consolidate on almost 1.2 hectares of Bellevue Hill since the late Sir Frank Packer’s original 1935 purchase for £7500.

Media scion Lachlan Murdoch and his wife Sarah followed suit after they bought the former French trade commissioner’s estate Le Manoir in 2009 for $23 million, adding two neighbouring properties to the estate – first in 2010 for $2.63 million and again in 2018 for $4.4 million.

A year ago, Louise Christie, the daughter of the late businessman Neville Christie, added to the 2500-square-metre Carrara estate she bought in 2009 for $17 million by purchasing the house next door, owned by Rich Lister Shay Lewis-Thorp, for almost $30 million for her daughter.

Earlier this month, property developer “MJ” Martono Jaya Kusuma, founder of Indonesian mobile telco Nexian, and his wife Rosana bought a three-lot site of 1400 square metres for about $16.5 million on which they are planning to build a family compound.