James Packer opts to sell his family's 'grace and favour' house in Woollahra for $7.5 million

For decades, Kerry Packer owned a couple of Woollahra properties known as his “grace and favour”, which were offered to family and friends in need. That largesse came to an end this week when his billionaire son James Packer put the last of them up for sale.

The curved residence on dress circle Rosemont Avenue is one of two bought by the late media magnate in 1965 for £36,000, and briefly considered as a matrimonial home by James and his former wife Erica more than a decade ago.

Instead, the then-newlyweds settled on building their Vaucluse mega-mansion La Mer, and the first of the Rosemont Avenue houses was sold for $8.5 million in 2010 to print magnate Michael Hannan.

That left the distinctive two-storey residence to be home to Kerry’s reputed “honorary goddaughter” and long-time friend of Gretel Packer, Georgia Moxham and her wine distributor husband, Paul Stenmark. Until now.

A November 8 auction has been set for the six-bedroom home with swimming pool on more than 1000 square metres. Ray White Double Bay’s Elliott Placks has a guide of $7.5 million.

The sale plans are just the latest moves by James Packer to cut his real estate ties with his hometown. In August he sold his Bondi Beach bachelor pad for $29 million to father and son property investors Roy and Anthony Medich.

His grand Vaucluse mansion, La Mer, was sold in 2015 for $70 million to Chinese-Australian businessman Chau Chak Wing.

Mr Packer now calls the United States home after he paid $82 million last month for the Beverly Hills mansion previously owned by Danny DeVito and his wife, actor Rhea Perlman. 

If James and Gretel Packer have a sentimental attachment to either of the Woollahra houses, it would most likely be for the one sold in 2010. In the early 1970s it was their childhood home, until their grandfather Sir Frank Packer died in 1974 and Kerry and Ros moved their family to the Cairnton estate in Bellevue Hill.

The house was mired in controversy last year when Hannan entered negotiations to sell it for more than $13 million to controversial former lawyer Sevag Chalabian, who said he was buying it for a client. A week later the  Australian Federal Police swooped on those allegedly involved in a $165 million tax fraud, in which Mr Chalabian was allegedly implicated, and the house sale was never completed. 

It sold a few months later for $13 million to former mining chief and restaurateur Brendan McPherson and his wife, Rowena, who had sold their nearby Victorian Italianate mansion Icilus for $13.5 million.