Howzat! Cricketer Michael Clarke scores $13m Vaucluse mansion

Former Test cricket captain Michael Clarke has made a grand return to the Vaucluse housing market just six months after he was forced to sell his matrimonial home, this time paying about $13 million for a mansion opposite historic Vaucluse House.

The European-inspired “bachelor pad” with five bedrooms, heated limestone floors, a grand wrought-iron staircase, formal and informal living and dining rooms, a reading room and a Tuscan-style cabana by the mineralised swimming pool is just the place for the newly single Clarke, with plenty of room for his daughter Kelsey Lee.

Clarke and his former wife Kyly sold their former home a block away on Fitzwilliam Road in February on the quiet for $12 million, seven years after they had purchased it for $8.3 million.

The cricket commentator is yet to settle on the house but has already been spied coming and going from his new digs, although not in the company of his former girlfriend Pip Edwards, despite tabloid speculation this week of a reunion between the two.

The house has a who’s who of previous owners, going back to the late Allco Finance senior executive Phil Griffin. After he died in 2008 it was sold by his estate for $4.62 million to property developer boss Bryan Rose, who offloaded it to construction boss Andrew Daoud for $8 million when he moved to Mosman.

Clarke is not the only Test cricketer to have made an impression on Sydney’s high-end housing market. Pat Cummins snapped up a Bronte house in March for $9.3 million, Brett Lee bought digs in Clontarf last year for $8.8 million and Dave Warner looks to have almost completed a four-year construction job on his forever home on the Maroubra oceanfront, prompting the recent sale of his “in-between” house up the road for $4.2 million.

Longueville record looms

The Longueville house price is set to be smashed when the long-held home of prominent media veteran Nick Falloon and his wife Diane hits the market for about $15 million in the coming week.

The Domain chairman (and Title Deeds’ ultimate boss) is downsizing to Potts Point, where the couple have undertaken a major renovation of the Villard building penthouse they purchased two years ago for $15.5 million from retired car dealer Laurie Sutton.

When the couple bought in Longueville in 1999 – securing one of the suburb’s few houses on deep waterfrontage for $3.185 million – Falloon was no doubt chuffed with his new home and its standout boating facilities with jetty, pontoon and four-pole mooring.

That is, until the night of the purchase when, at a social function, he was coincidentally introduced to one of his new neighbours who loudly shared the happy news that someone had just paid a record price for a house just a few doors away. Guffaws all round, until Falloon realised he was that buyer.

Twenty-two years later and Falloon is set to have the last laugh given the record now stands at $11.88 million, set in 2017 by another house on prized Belcote Road just a few doors away, owned by real estate mogul Ping Wei.

McGrath’s Brent Courtney has scored the plum listing.

Scott beams into Bondi

Returned expat and former Morgan Stanley banker Ben Scott and his wife Pensiri landed back in Sydney late last year and this week settled on their new home, paying $10.1 million for a landmark Federation house on more than 1000 square metres in Bondi.

The well-connected Scotts have been in New York for some 15 years, where Ben has been on the board of the Keith Murdoch-established American Australian Association. He returns to Sydney on the Australian board but with a new job alongside rockstar investment bankers like Matthew Grounds at Barrenjoey Capital.

The couple’s new digs – billed by The Agency’s Ben Collier as having “scope for a transformation” –  is an impressive step up the local real estate ladder from an art deco pad Scott purchased in 2004 on the Double Bay waterfront for $950,000.

New kid on the blockchain

Blockchain investor Renqi Shen is based in Singapore but it looks like his next stop is Mosman, given he settled on a house on Taylors Bay this week for an exact $12,666,666.

The chief investment officer of investment fund Block Asset Ventures purchased the five-bedroom house sight-unseen, and without the need for finance, from former Transfield chief Nicholas James and his wife Deborah.

The James family have owned it since 2005, paying $5.5 million at the time. They had listed it with another agent before The Agency’s Nic Yates took the listing and promptly sold it. Records show the Jameses are seeing out lockdown from their beachfront digs at Great Mackerel Beach.

Also on Iluka Road, dealmaker and racing-car driver Tim Miles, of Miles Advisory, is trading up from one end of the street to the other, paying $9.35 million on the high side of the street.

The Cat says sell

Media owner Antony “The Cat” Catalano may have bitten off more than he can chew in terms of his substantial property interests in Byron Bay.

The chairman of Australian Community Media already owns iconic Raes on Wategos guest house, as well as his own home, and late last year he snapped up the largest parcel of land at Wategos for $24.7 million that was previously owned by the Bundjalung of Byron Bay Aboriginal Corporation amid plans to build luxury accommodation.

Given plans to redevelop the site across 3400 square metres, an adjoining lot of 800 square metres left redundant by the plans has been returned to the market through Byron Bay Real Estate director Liam Annesley.

“Lot 13 is unique as it is boarded by two Crown Land lots so there are no neighbours and the vacant land offers families the chance to custom design the rest of their life in Wategos,” Mr Annesley said.

There is no price guide at this stage.