Seven's Bruce McWilliam sells Point Piper house with colourful past for $32m-plus

Media mogul Bruce McWilliam sold his Point Piper investment mansion with a notorious past on Wednesday night for more than $32 million — about three times more than he paid for it in 2013.

The bullish result is all the more telling about the strength of Sydney’s high-end housing market given the home’s colourful past as the centrepiece to a loan dispute between finance broker Adam Tilley and convicted murderer Ron Medich.

Brad Pillinger, of Pillinger, listed the three-level residence with uninterrupted harbour views three weeks ago for $32 million-plus but declined to disclose the sale result. Sources say the buyer was introduced to the property by Bill Malouf, of LJ Hooker Double Bay. Neither agent would disclose the sale result.

The property was previously owned by fashion designer Lisa Ho and her then-husband Philip Smouha until 2003 when they sold it for $7.75 million to Medich.

As detailed by the Sydney Morning Herald’s Kate McClymont in her book Dead Man Walking, Medich sold the investment 18 months later for $12.5 million to finance broker Adam Tilley with a loan of $17 million and a deal to build a five-storey apartment block on the waterfront site.

But the development never went ahead and when a $20 million sale of the property in 2009 was never finalised, the outstanding debt was transferred to businessman Michael McGurk, who allegedly firebombed the entrance to the battle-axe block more than a decade ago.

A year later McGurk was shot dead out the front of his Cremorne home. Less than a decade later, a jury found Medich guilty of being the mastermind behind his murder, for which he is currently serving a minimum 29-year sentence.

The waterfront residence remained part of an insolvency arrangement, of which Medich was the main creditor, until McWilliam and his wife Nicky picked it up in 2013 at a discount of $10.65 million, down from initial $20 million hopes. It was hampered by the fact Medich lived in one of the duplex apartments before it sold and by its notorious past.

In recent years there was a  redesign by celebrated interior designer Blainey North, with colours by Briony Fitzgerald.