Insurance mogul Richard Enthoven secures rare trophy sale for $22m in Point Piper

The Point Piper waterfront home of South African-born insurance mogul Richard Enthoven and his wife Karen has sold on the quiet for about $22 million.

The sale comes as the halfway mark approaches on one of the quietest high-end housing market years since the post-global financial crisis slowdown in 2012, and just two days after the Palm Beach residence Palm Haven, of the late lawyer Phillip Esplin, sold for about $21 million.

There have been only five recorded sales in the $20 million-plus trophy home range in Sydney this year, compared with last year’s market bonanza in which all top 20 sales were in the trophy home range.  Agents hope the two latest sales will restore some of last year’s market confidence.

Enthoven, the founder and chief executive of the Hollard Insurance Company and chairman of the Insurance Council of Australia, bought the four-level waterfront residence less than four years ago for $18 million from office furniture sellers David and Nadine Levin.

At the time the couple were trading up from Bellevue Hill, where they sold their former home in late 2015 for $7.3 million.

In recent months a DA was lodged with Woollahra Council for a $500,000 renovation on the Point Piper home by interior designer Hess Hoen, but the property has sold before the DA could be approved.

Sources say the property was being offered to buyers off-market for $22 million and transacted for about $21.8 million.

The Wunulla Road property with private jetty, boatshed and a pool is a few doors away from the waterfront house bought last year for $16.3 million by mining billionaire Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest.

The highest reported sale this year was in Vaucluse at between $28.5 million and $29.5 million for the mansion of press scion Alexander Ma.

Two neighbouring houses on the Rose Bay waterfront have also sold in recent months: one was the home of property baron Stephen Burcher for $23.56 million and the other was from the estate of the construction boss Rudi Sisic for $22.6 million.

The Esplin family’s Palm Beach holiday home with one of the area’s few tennis courts sold for about $21 million on Thursday through LJ Hooker Palm Beach to an eastern suburbs family.