Mother and son property binge fuels eastern suburbs trophy market, buying four $20m-plus homes

If there is a single factor fuelling Sydney’s bull run of trophy home sales this year, it isn’t cashed-up expats or even interest rates. It’s 28-year-old William Wenhao Wu and his property developer mother Jing Wang.

Mother and son’s insatiable appetite for real estate had already caught Title Deeds’ attention in April when it was revealed Wu had bought more than $50 million worth of houses in the previous 12 months, and that family portfolio blew out to almost $100 million when Wang’s property was added to the mix.

The family haven’t stopped since, adding another $65 million worth of eastern suburbs houses in recent weeks, including a Bellevue Hill mansion with tennis court, swimming pool and 16-car garage owned by Singapore’s Ho family.

There was much secrecy over the Bellevue Hill sale when sold by Christie’s Ken Jacobs, but it is expected to have exchanged at the top of its $24.5 million to $26 million range, and a company controlled by the Wang family’s corporate entity WW Australia lodged a caveat on the title this week.

Among the other recent purchases by the family owned companies is a run-of-the-mill house in Vaucluse with no pool or tennis court but a good view sold by Laing+Simmons’ Steven Zoellner for more than $23 million, a two-storey house in Vaucluse for about $7.6 million and the Du family’s Point Piper house for close to $10 million.

All up, that makes the Wang family the buyers of all four trophy home sales of more than $20 million this year in Vaucluse and Bellevue Hill.

It’s no doubt a credit to success of the family’s Chinese-backed property development company Mayrin Group, of which Wu has been a director since he entered the workforce six years ago.

Wu declined to comment for this story, so we’ll never know if he is buying for his personal use or as an investment, but at $165 million worth of property, mother and son are giving Sydney’s other prolific property shopper Mike Cannon-Brookes a run for his billions.

Saturday will reveal if there are any other prestige buyers in the market when Wu’s Bellevue Hill mansion he bought a year ago for $11.08 million is scheduled to go under the hammer through Ray White Double Bay’s Elliott Placks and Sotheby’s Michael Pallier. Yours for $16 million.

Symond’s Walsh Bay sale

Maybe it was something Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said in last week’s federal budget but soon afterwards his mate, outgoing Aussie Home Loans chief James Symond, returned from watching it all in Canberra with his fellow billionaire rat pack mates Justin Hemmes and Ryan Stokes and promptly sold his Walsh Bay apartment.

Details are scant given no comment from Belle Property Double Bay’s Alain Waitsman, but before the ad was removed from property sites this week it had a $15 million to $16 million guide, which, at that level, may well come near to the $16.1 million his multimillionaire uncle John Symond scored for his Walsh Bay pad in 2006.

Symond and his wife, Amelia, are headed to Bellevue Hill where he is undertaking a $9.5 million rebuild of a property purchased two years ago for $13.2 million from liquor businessman Gabor Kemeny.

WA pollie cashes in on Clovelly

The former West Australian premier emeritus professor Geoff Gallop and his wife Dr Ingrid van Beek sold their Clovelly home on Thursday for what sources say is about $6.5 million to move to their long-held weekender in Bundeena.

This is the Tom Rivard-designed house the couple purchased in 2010 for $4.15 million soon after they married. It was scheduled to go to auction on Saturday with a $6 million guide through a tight-lipped Daniel Gillespie, of Belle Property.

Gold miner’s Killara treasure

The Federation mansion of gold mining magnate and Hanjing Xu and his wife Yao Xu goes to auction on June 16 with a guide of $7 million.

The sale plans come a year after their daughter Cathy Xiao Xu took the keys to her 1880s-built Balmain home, bought for a suburb high of $11 million.

Xu, 33, is only the fourth owner of the historic waterfront house since it was built by Charles Yeend, the son of prominent innkeeper James Yeend, and comes after 60 years of Cloughessy family ownership after they bought it in 1960 from the liquidators for Mort’s Dock and Engineering Company for £3350.

Hanjing is one of the most influential businessman in the China-Australia mining industries, and was an executive with the Chinese state-owned enterprise China National Non Ferrous Metals in the 1990s when he joined former Macquarie bankers Nick Curtis and Jake Klein to found one of Australia’s biggest investment successes in China Sino Gold. The company was valued at $1.9 billion when it sold in 2009.

Hanjing and family purchased the Killara residence, Illaroo, in 2009 for $4.3 million, and have undertaken a renovation since, with Yao redesigning the bathrooms.

The almost 2000-square metre property with a swimming pool and vast internal living areas that include formal and informal living and dining rooms, a billiard room  and piano room remains beautifully maintained ahead of its sales campaign by Sotheby’s Ben Cohen.

Market catches up on Mosman home

Almost two years after Amway China’s Jack Zhijian Zhou and Guo Ying Ou listed their Mosman home on waterfront reserve, it has sold for $11 million.

The couple purchased it in 2005 for $4.7 million but in 2019 upgraded to the Rose Bay waterfront home of the late businessman Rudi Sisic for $22.6 million.

Mark Manners, of Simeon Partners, originally had a guide of $10 million, but as the market moved it looks like the guide did too, and a bullish market finally caught up with the desired sale price.

Clovelly’s local screen darlings

Retired screen veterans Anni Browning and Helen Evans have set a June 19 auction for their long-held Clovelly home.

Evans is a make-up and textile artist who worked on shows like Skippy and Storm Boy before working on the Aussie film great Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome with Browning.

Browning, long time managing director at Film Finances, and Evans purchased it in 1999 for $565,000, and almost 20 years later found themselves living next door to cricketer Moises Henriques.

Buyers are expected to pay about $3.5 million through The Agency’s Bethwyn Richards.

Tamarama pays off for travel boss

Expat Marcus Satha, who heads Citi’s London markets business, has joined the throngs of returning Aussie’s buying back home by buying the Tamarama home of Travelogic founder Craig Smith $14. 3 million.

Smith and his wife Kate set a suburb high when they bought the beachside house in 2017 for $12.5 million as a knock-down rebuild but rather than undertake the job opted to sell it with DA plans attached through PPD’s Alexander Phillips.