Ginia Rinehart buys Bondi Beach penthouse for $15 million

Ginia Rinehart and her husband Simon Robinson are set to join the hipsters of Bondi Beach thanks to the recent off-market sale of a penthouse in the Bondi Pacific for about $15 million.

The youngest daughter and heir apparent of mining mogul Gina Rinehart has been a well-documented house hunter along the eastern suburbs oceanfront in recent years, with reports she has eyed off luxury digs from Bronte’s landmark Wave House to a clifftop house in North Bondi.

But it is a penthouse atop the Swiss Grand Hotel redevelopment that has finally snared Rinehart’s attention. Sources have tipped a sale price of just shy of $15 million that is expected to settle in a company name linked to the 30-year-old heiress.

Overlooking Bondi Beach, the two-storey, four-bedroom apartment could become a permanent home for Rinehart and Robinson, who were married at Hamilton Island’s exclusive Qualia resort a year ago.

Rinehart isn’t Gina Rinehart’s only offspring to hit Sydney’s house-hunting trail in recent years. Her brother John Hancock was rumoured to have looked at high-end real estate in 2013 in the eastern suburbs.

It is unlikely Hancock and Rinehart swapped notes on local property values, however, after Rinehart sided with her mother in the bitter legal battle over the multibillion-dollar family trust, leaving relations between the siblings in tatters.

Sister Bianca, who replaced her mother as trustee of the Hope Margaret Hancock Trust after a protracted legal battle, was given the green light earlier this year to sue her mother for alleged misconduct in managing the family trust. ​

Relations between Ginia and her sister Hope appear to be somewhat warmer after Hope settled for a rumoured $300 million payout and showed up in a recent Vogue Brides photo shoot arm-in-arm with Ginia at the Hamilton Island wedding.

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Rinehart’s purchase of the corner apartment has been shrouded in secrecy, with a CBD-based source first revealing her purchase. Another source said the vendor was given a quick three-week period in which to vacate the apartment. Sources did not reveal if there was a selling agent involved in negotiations.

​Rinehart’s bullish purchase price sits in line with similar penthouse sales in the exclusive Bondi Pacific, but is more than double the $7.28 million records show it traded for in April last year when bought by actor-turn-singer Alisa Gray, wife of luxury car dealer Steve Nasteski.

The previous purchase price was considered an anomaly at the time because it was well down on the $10.34 million paid for the same apartment in 2012. At that time it sold off-the-plan to an offshore entity, Arama Property Investment, linked to wealthy Chinese-English poker player and art collector Tom Hall.

​Nasteski, a well-known art collector, told Domain at the time he had bought it as a home for his Brett Whiteley masterpiece On The Water that depicts Bondi Beach across six panels and spans 7.5 metres. The apartment has been extensively renovated and the floorplan reconfigured in the year since to make room for the Whiteley artwork. 

Nasteski is no stranger to high-profile buyers. He sold his art deco home in Coogee for $5,875,000 a year ago to comedian Tim Minchin and his wife Sarah.

Rinehart joins an impressive line-up of wealthy buyers in the luxury beachside complex developed by high-profile developers Allen Linz and Eduard Litver.

Will Vicars, co-chief investment officer at boutique fund manager Caledonia Investments, set a national apartment record in 2013 when he paid $21 million for two penthouses, although that high has since been topped by the $27 million penthouse at Circular Quay’s Opera Residences.

Joining Vicars in the building is art collector John Schaeffer, who paid $7 million for his sub-penthouse last year, Ruth Armytage, of the Fairfax family, who paid $8.1 million in 2013, and Russian businessman Alexander Smirnov, who paid $15 million last year.