Blue Mountains landmark built by Alex Proyas, Invisible House, returns to market

Cashed-up trophy-home hunters looking for the ultimate James Bond-style getaway are in luck. The award-winning residence Invisible House, set deep in the Blue Mountains, is about to hit the market.

This is the landmark mountaintop property built by Hollywood filmmaker Alex Proyas after he spent nine years sourcing the land. It was awarded the highest honour in 2014 when it was named Australian House of the Year.

Proyas listed the 65-hectare property in 2016 for $9 million, but despite offers of more than $5 million it languished on the market for two years before Byron Bay-based Brett Whiteley art collector Steve Nasteski and the chairman of software start-up Deputy, Steve Shelley, snapped it up for $3 million.

Since then the property has had a multimillion-dollar renovation that included the addition of a 10-metre-long infinity swimming pool, a helipad, vast decking and landscaping around the house, a drive-in/drive-out garage for six cars and 2.5 kilometres of concrete road for those Ferrari drivers.

James McCowan of Sotheby’s International and Ben Collier of The Agency are yet to formally set a price guide, leaving its value best described by Nasteski as “costing $10 million at a minimum to build as it is now, and taking at least five years of your life”.

Nasteski and Shelley are no strangers to high-end real estate. Shelley’s home is the Sutherland Shire trophy home Nautilus that claims everything from a subterranean “bat cave” entry from the waterfront jetty and boatshed to basement garages (plural), bowling alley and firing range. With a swag of awards to its name, and billed as sitting among Sydney’s best houses, it was listed recently for more than $50 million.

Byron Bay-based Nasteski was previously based in the eastern suburbs. He sold his Coogee home to Tim Minchin for $5.8 million in 2016 to buy a Bondi Beach penthouse for $7.28 million – selling it a year later for $14.75 million to mining heiress Ginia Rinehart.

The house that Fifty Shades bought

Amanda Hayward, the suburban mum-turned-publishing sensation who introduced the world to the delights of the Fifty Shades of Grey, has listed her luxury Dural estate amid talk of a sea change to Queensland.

The raunchy prose of English writer E.L. James became a global hit after Hayward’s The Writer’s Coffee Shop launched it in 2011, first as an e-book, and later as a best-selling trilogy for which her company received more than $US40 million ($53.6 million) in royalties.

The two-hectare property, purchased in 2012 for $4.78 million, could be straight from the pages of Fifty Shades as the home of the rich sadomasochist Christian Grey.

There is a grand porte-cochere entry and a vast floor plan that includes formal and informal living rooms, en suites to all six bedrooms, a home theatre, an al fresco living space backed by a glass-fronted aquarium, life-sized chess set, swimming pool, tennis court, garaging for 11 cars, and a separate three-bedroom guest cottage, presumably for staff.

LJ Hooker Dural’s Peter Colusso is yet to set a guide but is expecting it to sell between $8 million and $10 million.

Hayward’s sea change to Queensland comes just months after her neighbour Ray Hadley sold his acreage home to spend more time on the Gold Coast, listing his home for $7.7 million with Mr Colusso and promptly selling for close to that to an associate.

Meanwhile, the estate next door – owned by Lenora and Wayne Shipley, known as “Wayne the butcher” to Hadley’s 2GB listeners – has set a Dural high of $11 million, topping the $10.85 million record of 2018 set by Junlong Zheng, the husband of China’s richest self-made woman, Zhou Qunfei.

Ray White Dural’s Sandra Ward won’t disclose the sale price but records show the Shipleys sold it to former Penrith Panthers star-turned-wealthy developer Lou Zivanovic and his wife Olivia.

The Zivanovics were geared up to move to the Hunters Hill peninsula just a few months ago when they exchanged on the $12 million waterfront residence Brelades from former Platinum Asset Management chairman Michael Cole. However, a couple of caveats on the title have since been removed and the talk is that McGrath’s Tracey Dixon has already onsold Brelades for more money.

Tilley flips Bellevue Hill

Socialite and anti-lockdown protester Nellie Tilley is set to flip her next eastern suburbs home, listing her Santa fe-style apartment in Double Bay.

Tilley’s interior design work earned her a decent windfall on her previous home, a Double Bay terrace she purchased for $2.38 million in 2014 and sold four years later for $6.2 million after a lavish renovation to Tricia and Steve Stevens, who work for Shark Tank reality TV star Andrew Banks.

Her Bellevue Hill apartment on Aston Gardens last traded for $3.05 million in 2018, and has scored the same designer treatment, according to the before and after images.

David Malouf, of LJ Hooker Double Bay, was not available for comment on the listing, leaving it to sources to say interest is at the $8 million level.

Mosman’s competitive field

Bo Zhang, a business associate of exiled billionaire Huang Xiangmo, scored a pre-auction sale on his Mosman home on Wednesday night when an international buyer secured it for more than the $8.5 million guide.

The sale result remains undisclosed by Richard Simeon, of his eponymous agency, but he confirmed there were eight parties vying for the property ahead of Saturday’s scheduled auction.

The heated competition is expected to have driven the price up by close to $2 million more than it last traded for two years ago when Mr Zhang purchased the Beauty Point house for $6.6 million, with few changes to the property since.

The six-bedroom residence, held in Mr Zhang’s company name GT Australia Investment, is one of more than $30 million worth of property Zhang and his corporate interests purchased in Mosman’s Beauty Point over a two-year period from mid-2017 to 2019.

Mr Zhang’s corporate interests own five other houses also in Mosman’s Beauty Point area, as well as his own registered Mosman home on Balmoral slopes purchased in 2017 for $5.3 million.

Mr Zhang emerged from relative anonymity to be a major player on Sydney’s commercial property scene in 2018 when he joined Mr Huang’s Yuhu Group to buy the old Goldfields House at the Circular Quay development and the Jewel development on the Gold Coast for $1.18 billion from Chinese developer Dalian Wanda.

The following year the then 32-year-old Mr Zhang bought out Yuhu Group’s half share after Mr Huang’s Australian residency was cancelled.

Mr Huang has been exiled from Australia since leaving for China in late 2018, shortly before his residency visa was cancelled on character grounds.