Ex-turf club chairman Laurie Macri lists 'Coogee Castle' amid record hopes of $17m

The landmark concrete, glass and steel house perched on the clifftop at South Coogee – known locally as the Coogee Castle – is set to hit the market next week amid expectations of smashing the suburb record with a $15.5 million to $17 million guide.

The distinctive Bunya Parade residence is owned by former Macquarie executive and Australian Turf Club chairman Laurie Macri and his wife Christine, who bought it for $7.5 million in 2005 from high-profile businessman John Singleton and his then-wife Julie.

Singleton made a loss on his two year ownership, having purchased it for $8.2 million from Yolanda and Orazio Camuglia, who commissioned the design by architect Renato D’Ettore.

At the time the Singletons purchased it they were upgrading from their historic Woollahra residence Woodlands, which was sold for $6.82 million to former Crown chairman Rob Rankin. Woodlands is currently leased to Chris Hemsworth and his clan.

The palazzo-like South Coogee residence was completed in 1994, earning a commendation in the 2000 NSW Institute of Architects Wilkinson Award, and serving as a suitably glamorous backdrop to a Herb Ritts shoot of Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise for their film Eyes Wide Shut and an early season of The Apprentice, as well as a few fashion shoots.

The Macri family are planning to take a break from Sydney to move to Christine’s Perth hometown, prompting them to list it exclusively with Ballard’s Clint Ballard and James Ball.

It is expected to far eclipse the South Coogee high set late last year at $10.55 million for a rundown clifftop house, and even the Coogee record, also reset last year, when former real estate shop boss-turn-venture capitalist Marc Marano bought on Gordons Bay for $12.85 million.

Woollahra’s $1 million capital gain

As first-home buys go, Armando Kusuma has done better than most Sydneysiders on his first property investment.

Less than a year after he graduated from the exclusive Cranbrook School, Kusuma beat 10 other registered bidders at one of last Spring’s hottest auctions to buy the Lysaght family’s Victorian-era home in Woollahra for a bullish $5.71 million – well above the $4.5 million guide.

Of course, Kusuma may have had a little help from his dad, the Indonesian-born property developer “MJ” Martono Jaya Kusuma, who founded the Indonesian mobile telco Nexian in 2006.

Less than five months after Kusuma bought it, the Woollahra house has been sold on the quiet for $7.1 million to music events and festival promoter Ming Gan, a co-founder of Fuzzy Promotions.

Sources say Gan was one of the underbidders last September when it went under the hammer, but returned to buy it through 1st City’s Brad Caldwell-Eyles after a DA was approved to demolish the pool and build a second residence designed by architect Simon Hanson.

Even with $338,000 stamp duty, that’s a profit to Kusuma of more than $1 million.

Kusuma’s purchase ended 32 years ownership by John Lysaght, the 91-year-old former director of the family’s steel company John Lysaght Australia (now BlueScope). Lysaght purchased the five-bedroom period home in 1988 for $925,000.

Mosman’s well-heeled downsizers

Boston Consulting Group managing director and partner Brad Noakes is downsizing from his Federation Queen Anne-style Mosman mansion.

Belle Property’s Tim Foote has a $12.5 million to $14 million guide on the Clifton Gardens residence, double the $6.5 million it last traded for back in 2010 when sold by billionaire Greg Goodman.

Also planning a boom-time downsize from their Mosman digs are property investor Phil Arnold and his wife Michelle.

The Arnolds commissioned their Burley Katon Halliday-designed home on Fairfax Road as a lock-up-and-leave downsize following their purchase of the property in 2005 for $3.95 million.

In 2007 the couple sold their long-held trophy home on nearby Hopetoun Avenue for a then Mosman record of $22.5 million to property developer Albert Bertini, who demolished it and sold it for a loss four years later for $19 million so Ros Oatley next door could extend her garden.

The Arnolds have handed the keys to Belle’s Tim Foote, given plans to spend more time in Queensland.

Fugitive’s loss is Wenkart’s gain

David Wenkart, deputy chief executive at private hospital owner Macquarie Health Corporation, has bought the designer Mosman house of international fugitive Harry Xiang Huang for about $10.5 million.

Huang, the former chief financial officer of collapsed property giant iProsperity, fled overseas with his boss Michael Menghong Gu last July just weeks after the group collapsed, leaving $350 million in debts behind them.

The three-level residence was taken to market by Belle’s Tim Foote, and sold for a loss on Huang’s 2017 purchase price of $11.4 million from Adriane and Arjen Lugtenburg, of South African fund manager Allan Gray.

Macquarie Health Corporation was founded and is led by Wenkart’s Killara-based dad Dr Thomas Wenkart, who, for a brief 15 months in the 1980s, was a business partner of Geoffrey Edelsten, and now owns and operates about 12 private hospitals in Sydney and Melbourne – one of the largest such operators in the country.