Packer heiress Francesca Packer-Barham sells Elizabeth Bay pad after $15.8m upgrade

Heiress Francesca Packer Barham hasn’t let a little matter of a coronavirus pandemic interfere with her plans to sell her redundant Elizabeth Bay apartment.

While pubs, restaurants and even beaches have been firmly off-limits to the public, the daughter of billionaire Gretel Packer quietly negotiated to sell her two-bedroom spread in the Encore building for $2.6 million.

Packer Barham was just 21 when she bought it for $2.1 million in 2016 following her return from Melbourne after she broke up with property developer Kelli Holland. She sold her South Yarra home the following year for $7.6 million.

The Elizabeth Bay apartment is one of 78 in the Mirvac development built on what was formerly the Sebel Townhouse Hotel, renowned as the hotel of choice for superstars of the ’70s and ’80s like Rod Stewart, Elton John and David Bowie.

Packer Barham initially bought the two-bedroom spread as a Sydney bolthole from chief executive of FSA Group Tim Odillo Maher, but traded up last October to a whole-floor spread in the nearby Harry Seidler-designed Horizon tower for $15.8 million.

Settlement records show the apartment was bought by little known Alfred Street with no mortgage.

Fergusons opt out of high life

Former Macquarie banker-turned-Nulux Energy chairman Tony Ferguson and his medico wife Robin were looking forward to living in one of Sydney’s highest apartments when in 2014 they bought an off-the-plan sub-penthouse in the Greenland Centre in the CBD. But six years later, and with the skyscraper still under construction, the couple have had a change of heart.

It seems living atop Sydney’s tallest residential tower can’t compete with the allure of newly gentrified Millers Point precinct, where the couple have been camped since they sold their Pymble home a year ago for a high of $8.5 million.

The couple’s current home in the Stamford on Kent building was bought for $4.7 million as a temporary bolthole in 2016, back when the public housing sell-off was in full swing.

The decision to sell the Greenland apartment 18 months before completion came with a heavy heart, said Robin Ferguson, because it is the building’s only north-facing sub-penthouse and as part of the Diamond Collection of apartment that top the development it comes with extras like a protected balcony, and a lift shared by only a handful of neighbours.

The contract resale is up for $9.5 million to $10 million through Ray White Double Bay’s Nic Krasnostein and Residence Property’s Alex Vrisakis – a fraction of the $35 million that Chinese-backed developer Greenland Australia is asking for the King penthouse above.

Keighery set to cash in on Woollahra pad

No sooner did socialite Tiffany Tilley list her Paddington home amid plans for a Palm Beach sea change than her gal pal Lisa Keighery, widow of Marcs founder Mark Keighery, has followed suit by listing her Woollahra terrace.

Keighery already owns in Palm Beach, having bought on Snapperman Beach for $7.55 million in 2007, and recently completed a renovation ahead of her move to the glamorous holiday spot.

Keighery bought the terrace for $2.21 million in 2017 when she was trading down from her former home opposite the nearby Lough Playing Fields for $4.2 million.

Having sold through McGrath’s William Manning three years ago, Manning has again been enlisted to sell her Woollahra terrace, this time for $2.5 million to $2.6 million.

Manning suggested there were mooted plans to buy another weekender in the Southern Highlands or Berry district to round out the Keighery family’s weekends.

The fine art of the deal in Bowral 

Paddington-based art dealer and former chair of auction house Sotheby’s Justin Miller listed his historic Bowral weekender, Kowana, this week.

This is the 1890s residence in the historic Notts Hill precinct that was owned by record producer Mark Opitz and his wife Vanessa in the 1990s and boasts a noted garden that was established in the 1930s by Altona James, wife of Supreme Court judge Augustus James.

The 8000 square metre property, set across two titles, last traded in 2015 for $1.75 million.

It returns to the market for $3.75 million through Di Jones’ Michael Cawthorn.