Prominent car dealer Laurie Sutton buys $15.5m Potts Point penthouse

Prominent retired car dealer Laurie Sutton has again put his stamp on Sydney’s trophy home market, buying a $15.5 million penthouse in Potts Point’s landmark Villard building.

The purchase, atop the Ercole Palazetti-designed building, is the second-highest sale in the high-end neighbourhood and tops the $15 million high set when billionaire Bob Ell sold his Pomeroy penthouse six years ago.

Sutton’s purchase also sheds new light on his decision in March to list his architect Michael Dysart-designed residence in Darling Point for $35 million exclusively with Alison Coopes, of her eponymous agency.

The purchase from digital media boss Matthew Kapp and his wife Joanna was revealed on title records after it settled this week.

Kapp, the chief and co-founder of Ozmota Ventures, bought the whole-floor spread with private rooftop pool in 2000 for $4.69 million from Tim Higgins, of the Design Establishment furniture company.

Sutton, the son of the late Suttons Motors founder Sir Frederick Sutton, is no stranger to Potts Point. He bought a penthouse atop the exclusive Rockwall Apartments in 2011 for $8.85 million from then CBD Business Systems director Bill Smith, and listed it briefly earlier this year with $12 million hopes.

Potts Point has become a haven a who’s who of downsizers in recent years since the lock-out laws came into effect. Among the recent buyers are billionaire Gretel Packer with her $8.75 million penthouse in the Macleay Regis, Hardie Grant chairman John Gerahty given his $12.5 million sub-penthouse in the Villard; and audio king Peter Freedman, who set a $16 million suburb record last year when he bought his Ikon penthouse.

Sutton has claimed a string of sales records among his property purchases. He bought his Darling Point trophy home for a 2007 high of $18.5 million from nightclub entrepreneur Barry Wain.

In 2012, he put his name to two of the year’s highest sales when he traded in his Mosman estate on the waterfront in Beauty Point for a near-record high of $20 million, to buy the Palm Beach plantation-style residence Kalua for $22 million.