Developer who asked $30m for his Bronte trophy home sells for $25m

Good news this week for commercial property developer Andrew Podgornik and his wife Chloe, who sold their designer Bronte home a year after they listed it.

The bullish $30 million-plus price hopes of last year were not going to get the deal done, but a well-placed source puts the result at roughly $25 million.

And interior designer-turned-property developer Nadia Jacob is the ideal buyer given her penchant for landmark, eastern beaches real estate.

The exact result will have to be confirmed at settlement given no price disclosures, but PPD’s Alexander Phillips did at least confirm it had sold with Pillinger’s Brad Pillinger.

The Podgorniks are from established Melbourne stock. Andrew, who heads up Podcorp, is the son of the late building magnate Floyd Podgornik, and Chloe is the daughter of former Just Jeans boss Craig Kimberley.

The couple purchased it in 2008 for $7.55 million, and commissioned the pavilion-style house from Neeson Murcutt Architects.

It was completed in 2017 with landscaping by Daniel Baffsky’s 360 Degree Landscape, and the following year won the Australian Institute of Architects NSW Residential Architecture Award, and the AIA national award for best garden.

Jacob, owner and creative director of Cr Eight, is coming from Bondi Beach where she recently sold her Notts Avenue pad for about $9 million through Laing+Simmons’s D’Leanne Lewis.

Jacob’s penthouse in the same block she shares with Mable co-founder Peter Scutt, purchased in 2021 for $8 million, is also rumoured to be quietly on offer, again through Lewis.

Jacob has been buying, redesigning and flipping houses on the eastern beaches for about 20 years, among which is her former Bronte home she sold in 2016 for what was then a $14.5 million record, and her former Tamarama home sold in 2020 for $12 million.

Miners exchange digs

Quentin Flannery, the 37-year-old son of coal baron Brian Flannery, looks to be hatching home upgrade plans, buying a doer-upperer in Vaucluse for almost $32 million.

The house once known as Southmoor when built in 1913 was slated for demolition to be rebuilt to a Bruce Stafford design by the previous mining industry owners Mei Peng and Zhian Zhang, owner of mineral exploration company Australia Hualong.

But with better things to do than a $6.7 million rebuild, Peng listed it with Sotheby’s Michael Pallier with $31 million hopes, well above the $19.6 million paid in 2018 to the family of the late nightclub founders Helen and Andrew Andrews.

Enter fellow miner Flannery, the Bellevue Hill-based director of Omega Oil and Gas and chief investment officer of the Flannery family office.

Flannery was represented by Simon Cohen and Tom Penfold, of CohenHandler, who have maintained a dignified silence on behalf of their clients, leaving it to the chattier members of the eastern suburbs to reveal Flannery’s identity and plans for a renovation, rather than a detonation.

Flannery’s purchase comes at a good time for his oil and gas interests. Omega’s major shareholder is dad’s Ilwella Group, and Flannery himself owns a swag of shares worth more than $29 million as the share price peaked in September at 36¢.

Flannery Snr has been a regular on the rich list since 2009 when he sold his share of Felix Resources to China’s Yanzhou Coal for $530 million, and then palled up with Trevor St Baker to buy NSW’s Vales Point Power Station for $1 million (with debt) and sold it 2022 for $280 million.

Long for short, Flannery snr was ranked on the AFR 2024 Rich List 200 with an estimated worth of $939 million.

Cremorne’s slick deal

Oil baron Ben Vicary, who heads up the largest Aussie-owned oil manufacturer Gulf Western Oil, has paid $17.3 million for the Cremorne waterfront home of former investment manager Emilio Gonzalez and his wife Nicola.

Settlement revealed Vicary’s purchase on a delayed settlement after it was sold in May by Ray White Mosman’s Geoff Smith, and for almost $10 million more than the $7.9 million it traded for in 2005 from UBS senior executive Sharon Mitchell.

Bowral’s spare part

Former Boral chief Zlatko Todorcevski has given up on his redevelopment plans of an abandoned spare parts shop in Bowral, instead cashing in on the site to the tune of $7.04 million.

The 1800 square metres was purchased by Todorcevski’s interests for $2.6 million in 2017 amid his plans for a restaurant/retail/apartment development, but Wingecarribee Shire Council knocked back his application over parking issues.

Todorcevski, a former Star Entertainment director who is on the board of Autono Drone IP and chair of Retford Capital advisory, owns a landmark weekender on Wombarra beach he bought in 2012 for $2.5 million

No guesses what next for the site: it was bought by Harbison Memorial Retirement Village.