Macquarie chairman Peter Warne buys $16m Mosman downsizer

Sydney’s booming prestige property market seemed to slip the bounds of reason this week thanks to a run of top sales that shocked agents from both sides of the harbour and prompted claims of “FOMO on steroids”.

On Friday, sources revealed Macquarie chairman Peter Warne and his wife Frances have secured a four-bedroom downsizer around the corner from their long-owned Mosman estate in Clifton Gardens from Allco Finance’s former head of infrastructure Nicholas Bain and his property investor wife Kate.

The rumoured $16 million sale figure was not confirmed by Belle Property’s Tim Foote, but the architect Nanna Lesiuk-designed residence was listed for auction on November 2 with a $14.1 million-plus guide.

The Palm Beach-bound Bains undertook a major rebuild of the property since they purchased it in 2017 for $6.1 million.

Warne’s purchase came just two days after veteran stockbroker Brent Potts and his wife Pauline exchanged on a Darling Point apartment for $25 million, having sold their Rose Bay waterfront mansion two weeks ago for about $45 million.

Mosman’s tight listings market is mirrored in Bellevue Hill where a run of auctions this week shocked industry watchers, most notably when a modernist house built in 1964 for the Assef family that last traded in 2019 for $6.1 million went under the hammer for $12.2 million with no improvements in the intervening years.

Earlier this week the Bellevue Hill mansion Taynish was sold by commercial property magnate Robert Christie for $20.9 million – well above the $15 million guide. It sold at the same time as another Bellevue Hill house went to auction with a $7 million guide and sold for $9.2 million to a buyer with plans to knock it down and rebuild.

Dr Shane Oliver said it’s not just the prestige market. “Wherever you have good lifestyle appeal house prices are going bonkers,” Dr Oliver said.

“According to most metrics, we are already in an overvalued market.

“But at the prestige end of the market, we have FOMO [fear of missing out] on steroids because buyers have the capacity to dig deep and they are obviously doing so.”

Buyer’s agent Deborah West of SydneySlice said: “There’s a possibility that this week will recalibrate price points across this market.”

West said the lack of suitable houses for sale in the fast-shrinking timeframe before Christmas was prompting panic buying in some cases.