Fairfax heir sets inner-west Sydney record with $15m buy; new Annandale high of $8.7m set

The Fairfax newspaper family is regaled in property circles for selling Australia’s most expensive houses, for $71 million and $100 million apiece, but that family fortune has spread to the inner west after one of the descendants of newspaper pioneer John Fairfax bought a $15 million house on the Balmain peninsula.

The recent off-market sale of the heritage Balmain East home of bookshop owner Jay Lansdown and his wife Fiona has, in turn, triggered an Annandale house sale of $8.7 million amid a housing boom fast reshaping neighbourhoods that were once among Sydney’s poorest.

Angus White is the grandson of the late Lady (Nancy) Fairfax and Sir Vincent Fairfax, the latter of whom was for decades a director of John Fairfax (former publisher of The Sydney Morning Herald) until he resigned in 1987 following the privatisation of the company by his second cousin Warwick Fairfax.

White, who with his wife Emma, sold their Birchgrove home last year for $4 million, has quietly continued the family’s tradition of philanthropic pursuits, sitting on the boards of a few charitable organisations, including the Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation.

White’s newly purchased home is a maritime villa built in 1883 on the Balmain East waterfront. The facade was oriented to face the harbour in order to monitor the tides, but more than a century later, that outlook features a view of the Harbour Bridge and a contemporary rear extension added in 2008 by pub baron Peter De Angelis.

The four-bedroom residence – with a boat shed, slipway and swimming pool – last traded in 2013 for $8.65 million when De Angelis sold it to Fiona Lansdown, whose husband owns the popular Crows Nest and Mosman book stores Constant Reader.

When the sale settles next month, it is expected to top the inner west’s previous high of $14.25 million set in Birchgrove two years ago when property investor and developer John Gobbo bought the home of healthcare boss Jayne Shaw.

Further recalibrating local prestige values, the Lansdowns have taken the proceeds of their trophy sale to Annandale, where they have bought a two-house consolidation on Trafalgar Street for $8.7 million.

The deal remains shrouded in secrecy given no comment from the agents widely tipped to have been involved in the two record sales Matt Hayson, of Cobden & Hayson, and buyer’s agent Peter Kelaher, of PK Property, but details emerged after the new Annandale record was trumpted on Instagram this week.

The Annandale sale – $3.7 million more than the suburb’s $5 million record set in 2019 – is a nod to the impressive designer consolidation of the two houses by Simon Ashcroft, who purchased a double-fronted residence in 2010 for $2.71 million, adding the worker’s cottage next door a year later for $799,000 to create a 676-square-metre property with a pool.

It comes on the back of a 9.4 per cent jump in Annandale’s median house price in the year to March, led by the upper end of the market where supply is failing to keep up with demand, according to Domain senior research analyst Nicola Powell.

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In Leichhardt, records show the old Salvation Army Hall in Leichhardt has sold for $4.25 million. Cobden & Hayson’s Ben Southwell listed it last year, but it didn’t sell given the best offers of $3.7 million and $3.825 million.

The local landmark residence returned to the market this year and at a March auction sold under the hammer $450,000 above the reserve.

And a recently built pair of adjoining four-bedroom homes were listed with hopes of $4 million by Southwell in April, and both sold for $4.45 million.