Servo mogul shrugs off liquidation, aims to sell record-setting $10.5m home

Service station mogul Rizwan Rana is no doubt hoping to better the record-setting $10.5 million price he set for Glenhaven last year when he purchased his 16-room mansion.

It was a private purchase at the time, just a couple of months after tennis champion Lleyton Hewitt and his wife, former soapie star Bec Hewitt bought luxury acreage a few blocks away for $10.3 million.

Rana’s new home is impressive by any measure. Newly built in 2022, the six-bedroom, seven-bathroom residence includes five separate living areas, two chef’s kitchens, a gymnasium, home theatre, eight-car garage, an indoor swimming pool and spa, and championship tennis court.

But following Rana’s recent separation from his wife, he says the house is a little too big for just him and his mother, which is why he has listed it for more than $10.5 million with Century 21’s Jim Yang.

But Rana has had to contend with more than just extra living space in the year since he bought it. In April, he and his business partner Satwinder Singh called in the liquidators to their investment company, Zoya Investments.

At its peak Zoya had amassed an investment portfolio of about 29 petrol stations and properties across NSW, Queensland and Western Australia, which included a handful of stations across Newcastle and the Hunter Region.

But Rana said their company margins have been suffering in recent years, in part from the increasing take-up of electric cars and because people will often go to less reputable petrol stations where they can buy illegal vapes.

Records show Zoya sold four petrol stations in Newcastle and the Hunter Region last year alone for more than $12.5 million.

But it wasn’t enough. A recently filed liquidator’s report by Vanguard’s Mohammad Najjar states the company now has debts of more than $14 million owed to five unsecured creditors.

And a week before liquidation, Rana and Singh resigned as directors to be replaced by Sania Sania, a 28-year-old who, according to the liquidator’s report, “purports to have no knowledge about the affairs of the company”. Ownership of Zoya was also transferred to Sania.

Rana said that company transfer to Sania represented the sale of the company’s office cleaning business for about $50,000.

Adding to Rana’s woes is a now-defunct petrol station previously owned by Zoya but now owned by his and Singh’s new company, Ras Kanwal Group. It recently copped a $320,000 fine from the Land and Environment Court thanks to a leaking petrol tank, and Rana said they are currently undertaking a clean-up of the site.

However, the contamination had also spread to the vacant block next door owned by developer Seaforth Securities, which is part of the Yeramba Estate. It recently successfully sued Zoya Investments, winning damages in the Supreme Court totalling more than $9.3 million in August.

And as Rana contends with a serious back injury that has left him on bed rest and facing surgery in coming months, the Commonwealth Bank mortgage on the title of his Glenhaven property was joined a few weeks ago by a second mortgage of $6.75 million.

Goodman territory

Billionaires Greg and Anna Goodman have deepened their attachment to Woollahra, buying a fourth property in the suburb, this time for $7.65 million.

It takes their local portfolio to more than $38 million, including their historic Orama residence.

The Goodmans’ new investment is the designer Victorian terrace of Jacqueline Solomon, widow of former Double Bay Chamber of Commerce chairman Greg Solomon, who purchased it in 2021 for $5.6 million.

High flying

The Rose Bay home of Qantas’ former top frequent flyer, the late Mel Gottlieb, is for sale for the first time in 40 years following his death last year, aged 84.

Gottlieb had flown around the world more than 100 times before the end of last century, and clocked up some 7 million points by 2008, by which time he had long earned his Frequent Flyer No.1 card.

His Rose Bay house is the former gatehouse to sports administrator Peter Montgomery’s landmark Fernleigh Castle up the road, and was bought by Gottlieb in 1984 for $430,000.

McGrath Double Bay’s Craig Pontey has an $8 million guide.

The new price is right

Prince Albert House, the Mosman home of hotelier Matthew Fallon and his partner Tamara Martin, has sold for more than $15 million.

The sale shows how important it is to price things right in this market. It was listed earlier this year for $18.5 million to $19.5 million, but never sold, and the sales gig handed to Atlas’s Michael Coombs recently with a guide of $15 million to $15.75 million.

Fallon, who heads up the PNG-based construction giant Dekenai, bought the 1907-built house in 2016 for $10 million, a year after he and his brothers Luke and Tim bought the local landmark pub The Buena.