Rose Bay house of developer Robert Burger sold after guide discounted for COVID-19 crisis

The Rose Bay residence of commercial property developer Robert Burger has secured a rare sold sticker in the post-lockdown market after initial price hopes of earlier this year were discounted.

The sale result remains a tightly held secret to Laing + Simmons Double Bay’s Steven Zoellner and Bart Doff, but buyers were being offered a guide of $13 million to $14 million before it sold to a local, and sources say it sold inside the range.

While the sale was being welcomed as a fillip to the market by prestige agents in the east, the result is well down from initial $16 million hopes when it was first listed in late February.

Burger bought the Fernleigh Gardens property in 1997 for $2 million from designer Tristan Lavery, and the modernist residence with panoramic harbour views, six bedrooms, rumpus room, swimming pool, four-car garage, gym, steam room and karaoke room was approved by Woollahra Council in 2002.

Recently completed, it was listed in February following Burger’s move to the Vaucluse waterfront where he has recently renovated a Luigi Rosselli-designed trophy home on dress-circle Coolong Road.

Burger’s Vaucluse residence was famously rented by Leonardo DiCaprio in 2011 and more recently was the Sydney home of Chinese billionaire Richard Qiangdong Liu before Burger bought it for $38.8 million, making it the fifth highest sale of 2018.

It was sold by Mr Liu’s associate Huang Qiaorong who, with her husband Zhang Xuansong, is co-owner and director of China’s Yonghui supermarket chain.

Burger is the son of the late property mogul David Burger. His sister Karen Michael has also upgraded her eastern suburbs real estate recently, buying the $15.8 million Tamarama home of Annie Conley, daughter of the late aviation pioneer John Conley.