NSW Governor Margaret Beazley puts Lavender Bay home up for sale for $11.5m

New NSW Governor Margaret Beazley has no sooner swapped her private residence for the grandeur of Government House than she has listed the Lavender Bay family home for sale for $11.5 million.

The highly decorated former Federal Court judge was appointed Her Majesty’s state representative in May, taking the reins from new Governor-General David Hurley, as well as residency in the Gothic Revival building adjoining the Royal Botanic Gardens.

The selling plans of Governor Beazley come 30 years after she bought the Lavender Bay house for $1.3 million – the same year she was appointed a Queens Counsel and at a time when Sydney’s median house price was $170,850.

The following year, she bought the house next door on the corner of King George Street as an investment for $540,000.

The Agency’s Dino Gatti is expecting interest from both owner-occupiers and developers planning to redevelop the 450-square-metre site.

The long-held home of Governor Beazley and her barrister husband Dennis Wilson is privately set above a double garage on Bay View Street in an increasingly prized harbourside pocket that has seen a run of big-ticket sales in recent years to a who’s who of corporate Australia.

Co-founder of recruitment giant Morgan & Banks Geoff Morgan and wife Roslyn are undertaking a major rebuild of the house they bought two doors away in 2015 for $9.85 million, and Bardia Housman, who founded Australia’s first free email service Start.com.au in 1997, is undertaking a major rebuild of the waterfront house up the road he bought in late 2012 for $10.3 million.

Tech entrepreneur Daniel Petre is around the corner in the landmark Villa Medusa mansion he bought four years ago for $8 million, having sold his Victorian mansion on the same street in 2016 for $7.4 million to REA chairman Hamish McLennan.

Governor Beazley’s new home was designed by royal architect Edward Blore in the Gothic Revival style and was a work of progress that started in 1836 but wasn’t completed until 1845 because of years of delay and budget overruns. Extensions over the course of more than a century have created what is now a 20-room building with official reception rooms and seven bathrooms.

Recently retired governor-general Sir Peter Cosgrove also made the most of his vice-regal appointment in 2014 to sell his Neutral Bay townhouse when he moved to Admiralty House in 2014 for $2.1 million.

Sir Peter stepped down in June and he and Lady Lynne Cosgrove have since downsized to the Pinnacle building in Milsons Point, buying a three-bedroom apartment for $2.25 million earlier this year.