Mansions of Daniel and Danielle Besen expected to be Victoria's most expensive

One of Australia’s richest families is selling a record-smashing $50 million-plus property portfolio, including a Melbourne mansion that will be the most expensive home to ever hit the market in Victoria.

The highest-end listings come as buyers continued to dig deep at auctions on Saturday. 

Entrepreneurs and arts patrons Daniel and Danielle Besen are understood to be preparing to list the cutting-edge 9 Towers Road in Toorak, which industry insiders expect could fetch in excess of $30 million.

That benchmark, for the world-class, custom-built property, would set a Victorian price record.

The Besens are also selling their modern Mornington Peninsula mansion, Miramar, which ranks among Victoria’s most expensive and distinctive holiday houses.

The sculptural Flinders estate is expected to attract interest in the realm of $20 million.

The state’s record is held by the $26 million sale of Portsea cliff-top estate Ilyuka in 2010. The record for Melbourne’s most expensive house sale was set earlier this year at 4 Robertson Street, Toorak, which traded for above $24 million.

As winter breaks, the heat remains in pockets of Melbourne market.

A Kew property on Saturday fetched $1.7 million over reserve.

The Hong Kong-based buyer flew in on Thursday to inspect the 1960s knockdown job at 51 Rowland Street.

The whopping result follows two homes smashing reserve last weekend by more than $1.2 million.

Also in Kew on Saturday, a buyer paid $6.24 million at auction for 7 Wimba Avenue — a grand 1930s house. A scarcity of triple-A homes on the market is tempting luxury vendors, who might normally sell privately, to test competition under the hammer.

Marshall White director Marcus Chiminello is representing the Besens’ Toorak property, which will launch on the market early next month.

The Besen family is worth more than $2.41 billion, according to last year’s BRW Rich List, and are prominent in art and philanthropy.

The mansion on the corner of Toorak’s Lansell and Towers roads, with a distinctive disc roof and a subterranean art gallery, is understood to have taken seven years to complete.

Remarkably, it is rumoured to have never been lived in.

The design and construction cost is believed to be about $24 million; an estimate independent of triple-A land value. It occupies a large corner block where two of Toorak’s finest streets intersect.

Mr Chiminello will lead an international expressions of interest campaign.

Mr Chiminello also sold the Robertson Street manor, which was owned by businessman Tony Smorgon and his wife, Jennifer.

The expressions of interest campaign for Miramar in Flinders will launch in about a fortnight, through Peninsula Sotheby’s International Realty agent Rob Curtain.

The five-star seaside property was designed by high-end architects Wood Marsh.

The firm’s website describes the award-winning home as having internal spaces which “follow the lead of the exterior, with a sinuous walkway forming the backbone of each of the two boomerang-shaped volumes”, a “sunken living pod” and “cocooned” bedrooms with views.

Roger Wood and Randal Marsh also designed Port Phillip Estate Winery at neighbouring Red Hill and the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art at Southbank, among other notable Victorian public and private buildings.

Daniel, who runs his own private equity business, is the son of billionaire retail tycoons Marc and Eva Besen, who founded the clothing company Sussan Group.

His uncle is Chadstone Shopping Centre mogul John Gandel, and he is a trustee of the charity The Besen Family Foundation.

Marc and Eva Besen are art collectors and benefactors, and opened Australia’s first privately funded, public art museum at TarraWarra Estate in the Yarra Valley.