Rossi home puts Northwood on trophy map with $20m guide

One of the most significant estates on the lower north shore long owned by the late travel industry doyenne Mary Rossi is set to hit the market for the first time in 60 years with a guide of $20 million.

The last time the almost 5000 square metre waterfront estate traded was 1961 when Mary and her late husband Theo Rossi purchased it for £16,500 on the recommendation of their friend and fellow Northwood local, acclaimed artist Lloyd Rees.

In the decades that followed, the Rossi family became widely known among the old Catholic families of the lower north shore thanks not only to the couple’s 10 children, but also Mary’s pioneering work founding Mary Rossi Travel in 1970, championing the rights of women to work outside the home while raising a family, and as one of the first women in Australia to host her own television show, Woman’s World.

The family’s 1915-built plantation-style manor remains one of Northwood’s oldest houses and is set on its largest privately owned parcel of land with an expansive garden that includes a championship tennis court, an orchard and bushland that extends to a stone boat house.

“There were more than a dozen family wedding receptions on the veranda or in the garden. We had hundreds of other parties including 21sts, graduations, dances in the cellar and significant birthdays,” said Claudia Rossi.

“On weekends our extended family would gather for tennis or boating.”

But no longer. The family matriarch died in May, aged 95, and the estate is being sold by Ray White’s Geoff Smith and Richard Harding with an October 20 expressions of interest deadline.

Pricing the estate has not been easy because there are no properties of this size locally. The nearest comparables are further afield in Hunters Hill where Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton sold their smaller 3600 square metre property Bulwarra for $18 million in 2017 (resold in March for $17.25 million) and Woolwich’s waterfront mansion Vailele, which set a high of $22.18 million.

Northwood’s record has stood at $11.2 million since 2018, when former Wallabies player-turn-hotelier Bill Young bought a non-waterfront house with a tennis court.

Paddington terrace ready for takeoff

Sydney Airport chief Geoff Culbert certainly has a lot on his mind this week: there is the matter of overseeing the sale of Australia’s largest gateway, and on a home front he and his wife Emma Ward are juggling the up-coming sale of their Paddington home for more than $11 million.

The timing makes sense when you consider that the start of school holidays this week means inspections won’t interfere with home schooling his youngest kids, and the family’s plans to downsize to Double Bay.

Sources say early this year Culbert and Ward purchased an ultra-contemporary terrace in Double Bay for about $9.7 million set over five levels complete with a sauna, gymnasium and a swimming pool with a glass bottom to the home office below.

Culbert and Ward have owned their Paddington terrace (next door to one owned by Lucy Turnbull) with its north-facing rear garden and a pool since 2014, renovating it in recent years and securing DA approval for a self-contained studio above the garage.

The Agency’s Ben Collier launched the level 400 square metre property to the market this weekend ahead of an October 16 auction.

Patience pays off for Mittabah

Four years after the Southern Highlands property Mittabah was first listed for $9 million it has sold.

The on-and-off nature of the campaign ended up serving it well, with the guide racheted up to $12 million before it sold, and sources say it sold for close to that amount.

Corina Nesci and Samuel Lindsay, of Drew Lindsay Real Estate, declined to reveal the sale price or buyer’s identity, but its history is well documented.

The grand sandstone and cedar residence was designed by architect Ron Gilling, son of architect F. Glynn Gilling, on behalf of the late Citadel insurance founder Sir Arthur Weller, best known for overseeing the construction of the replica of Captain James Cook’s Endeavour in the early 1990s.

The property has long commanded a record for Exeter, first in 1989 when it was purchased by Sir Weller and his widow Lady (Marea) Weller, and again in 2005 when they sold it as a larger 117-hectare holding with the Gilling homestead for $8.65 million to twice-bankrupted property developer and competitive bodybuilder James Vertzayias.

Vertzayias sold it for yet another high in 2011 for $9 million to a syndicate of investors of whom the majority owner is ball-bearing businessman Karl Martin-Weber, but which also briefly included John Hewson at the time.

Vertzayias and his Globe Property Group’s fortunes took a widely different turn in 2012 when he was declared bankrupt and last year he pleaded guilty to swindling $1.18 million in payments from a construction company for a “ghost project” that wasn’t approved. He was sentenced last December to a three-year intensive corrections order and 300 hours of community service.

Mittabah’s latest sale again reclaims the Exeter crown, topping the $9.35 million paid last year for the Colonial-style property Mandalay next door.

Mosman’s high-end house trade

Word from Mosman has no sooner leaked to reveal that businessman Martin Boustred and his wife Fiona are the more than $16 million buyers of the home of litigation lawyer Ann Donohue and environmental planner David Snashall than they have listed their own high-end digs around the corner.

The Boustreds were previously Warrawee locals when they purchased their Mosman home on Fairfax Road in 2007 for $4.35 million, and commissioned a striking north-facing residence by architect Ian Moore that was completed a decade ago.

Atlas’s Michael Coombs has since set a guide of more than $16.8 million for the Boustreds‘ designer digs.

Energy boss lobs in Rose Bay

Terry Fern, the Vaucluse-based chairman of the US oil and gas exploration company Petsec Energy, has picked up a 1920s-built house backing on to the Royal Sydney Golf Club.

Records are yet to reveal the sale price of the seven-bedroom digs at the end of Kent Road and there was no comment forthcoming from 1st City’s Julian Hasemer and Sotheby’s Michael Pallier, but it carried a guide of more than $10 million before it sold.

Fern has long been based on the Vaucluse waterfront next door to “high-rise Harry” Triguboff, having purchased for $3 million in 1987 before he made his 1995 debut on the rich list.