First Bronte, now Tamarama smashes suburb record with $25m house sale

A Tamarama house set on the hillside overlooking the glamorous stretch of sand has sold for more than $25 million, smashing the suburb high set earlier this year by more than 50 per cent.

The sale comes amid a bull run of house sales along the eastern beaches, where house price records have been reset this year in South Coogee, Clovelly, Bondi, Maroubra and Bronte, where blockchain start-up co-founders Joanne Way Yee Huynh and Dorjee Sun bought a beachside house for $23.3 million.

Psychiatrist Greg McLean and respiratory specialist associate professor Janet Rimmer listed their north-facing residence at Tamarama with agent Pauline Goodyer three weeks ago with a $20 million guide that initially surprised some local property watchers.

Despite no comment on the result by Ms Goodyer, local sources say there were multiple parties vying for the property at more than $20 million before it sold for more than $25 million. Settlement will confirm the exact result.

The medico specialists have owned the four-storey house set between Thompson Street and the beachfront Tamarama Marine Drive on 570 square metres since 1983, when they bought it for $248,000 from retired GP Dawn Evans.

“These are generational houses and buyers really only get the chance to buy one once in a lifetime,” Ms Goodyer said, adding that the result was boosted by a “boom in lifestyle houses, and these properties fronting the beaches have been under-valued for some time, until now.”

The only higher result on the eastern beaches was James Packer’s former home on Bondi Beach, which sold in 2018 for $29 million.

The Tamarama house sale comes just days after a dilapidated block of five apartments on oceanfront reserve was sold to a developer for $29.2 million.

South Coogee’s record price was also smashed by almost 60 per cent in May when the co-founder of the Finder comparison empire, Fred Schebesta, bought the landmark “Coogee Castle” for $16.85 million from former Macquarie executive Laurie Macri and his wife Christine.

Maroubra’s high was reset at $14 million earlier in the year, Clovelly’s at $13.5 million and a Bondi house sold for $10.1 million to returned expat and former Morgan Stanley banker Ben Scott and his wife Pensiri.