As fund manager Rob Luciano settles on $18m Mosman house, ex-ANZ trader Steve Bellotti undeterred with $35m hopes

Hedge fund manager Rob Luciano and his wife Samantha have found their replacement Mosman home, emerging as the $18 million buyer of the Hopetoun Avenue residence of Siobhan Downe.

The long-time Mosman locals had planned to upsize from their long-held Balmoral Slopes home in 2017 when they bought a seven-bedroom house on The Grove for $10.5 million amid talk of a looming major renovation but clearly had a change of mind soon after given they sold it the following year for $11 million.

Luciano, the influential head of VGI Partners, then ploughed $18 million into buying the Palm Beach trophy weekender of Hardie Grant chairman John Geraghty in 2018, and last year sold his former weekender on nearby Florida Road for $4.4 million.

The Millers Point-bound Downe must be relieved to settle on the double block complete with tennis court given it was listed 18 months ago with Raine & Horne Mosman’s Brendan Warner and Richardson & Wrench Mosman’s Stephen Patrick and exchanged in a flurry of top-end Mosman deals earlier this year before everything changed thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The property with a swimming pool last traded in 2001 when sold by former Vivendi Water boss Kevin Doyle and his wife Anna for $6.25 million, and Downe added next door for $3.26 million to make way for a floodlit tennis court.

The sale ranks in the top five sales of 2020, topped by the more than $22 million sale of the Palm Beach trophy home of the late media legend Sam Chisholm‘s daughter Caroline Jumpertz; the Mosman mansion of dentist Daniel Adamo and former recruitment boss Katie Adamo for close to $22 million; a $19.5 million house sale in Point Piper to used car dealer Tony Denny;  and the German government’s Woollahra property to tech billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes for about $18 million.

Mosman’s record hopes

Luciano’s purchase earlier this year has been followed by a tumultuous share market rout and unemployment queues that have prompted an unprecedented government rescue package, but that hasn’t deterred former ANZ head of global markets Steve Bellotti from allowing buyers through his Mosman mansion given $35 million hopes.

LJ Avnu’s Michael Coombs says he has already had interest at close to $30 million from his off-market campaign.

For backgound, Bellotti, the chair of Token Capital Management, bought the 1700 square metre property on waterfront reserve in 2014 for $9.5 million from Carole Bailey, ending a seven-year campaign to sell it that started in 2007 with what were considered outlandish hopes of $15 million at the time.

That house no longer exists, knocked down in 2015 to make way for what is now a striking “Brazilian modern-inspired” residence, according to the website of its architect Shaun Lockyer built from concrete, stone, timber and steel seemingly cantilevered over Taylors Bay below.

Bellotti and his wife, former owner of the Aspen Spa and Yoga Studio Carrie Hayes Bellotti, are in no rush to sell, but with the couple’s plan to return to live in the US, Coombs is making the most of many expats in town and the dire state of the Aussie dollar to show off the property ahead of a full campaign late this year.