John Roth secures his Darling Point waterfront neighbour for $30 million

Property magnate John Roth and his wife Jillian Segal have bought their waterfront neighbour, Edgewater, in Darling Point for $30,263,400.

The deal is no surprise to trophy home watchers given Roth, who lives in the house behind Edgewater, has had an option to buy the harbourside residence in recent years amid plans to build a block of apartments on the double block.

It was sold by Hong Kong businessman Hans-Rainer Ehrhardt and his wife, author Hilda Ying Ehrhardt, who bought it 2001.
It previously traded for $9.5 million when sold by entrepreneur Peter Laurence, founder and chairman of his family’s mining and property development Pivot Group.

In 2012 MPR Design Group submitted plans to Woollahra Council to demolish the two houses and build a block of apartments on the double block of some 1500 square metres at a cost of more than $13.6 million. 

Two years later council dismissed that application. 

The DA was taken to the Department of Planning and Environment last year, but was not successful.

Prominent locals joined the vocal opposition to Roth’s redevelopment plans last year, including businessman John Walton and merchant banker Jim Dominguez, because it sought to breach a long-standing requirement that buildings must be set back 30 metres from the waterline.

More than 1300 signatories to a Darling Point Society petition argued approval would be “an invitation to other developers to apply to build unit blocks ever closer to the harbour foreshores”.

The Roths have owned their Darling Point residence on Yarranabbe Road since 1986, when it was sold by obstetrician-gynaecologist Oscar Horky for $840,000.

The sale is one of only a few sales this year in the $30 million-plus range. The highest transaction is the $71 million sale of the Elaine estate in Point Piper to Atlassian co-chief executive Scott Farquhar.

Luxury car importer Neville Crichton paid $33 million earlier this year for his Point Piper home and recently resold it for more than $36 million.

In Rose Bay a knock-down-rebuild sold on the waterfront earlier this year for $30 million to Samira Jeihooni, wife of property developer Arash Tavakoli.

Tech entrepreneur Patrick Grove paid $28 million earlier this year for a knock-down-rebuild house on the waterfront.