Historic Yass mansion sold after a decade on the market

One of the state’s oldest houses, the historic Old Linton mansion in Yass in the Southern Tablelands of NSW, has sold after being on and off the market for more than a decade.

The more than $3 million hopes of 2011 when the owners Stephe and Karina Jitts first put it to auction never quite materitalised, nor the $3.95 million guide of 2015, but the property boom impacting regional NSW has secured more than $2.5 million for the two-hectare estate.

A handful of selling agents had been enlisted to try and sell the property over the past decade, and there was a star appearance in 2016 on a double episode of reality television show Selling Houses Australia in which property experts Andrew Winter, Shaynna Blaze and Charlie Albone oversaw a nine-day renovation in a bid to help it sell.

It didn’t work and late last year Sotheby’s David Medina took over the listing with a revised $2.75 million asking price.

Mr Medina declined to reveal the exact sale price, confirming only that it sold for more than $2.5 million.

The 46-room residence dates back to 1857 when it was built by Moses Moses, the first Jewish convict to be transported to Australia, and was vastly extended beyond its original size at Federation when it was owned by legendary sheep baron Arthur Bryant Triggs.

After Triggs died in 1936 it was run as a war veterans’ home, and returned to private hands in 1990.

The two-hectare estate with landscaped gardens, formal rose garden and swimming pool has a vast internal floor plan covering about 1100 square metres. There are three separate wings with a grand billiard room and adjoining ballroom at the centre, plus a dining room with space to seat 50 people, formal and informal lounge and reception rooms, 13 bedrooms, a commercial-grade kitchen with a cool room, a separate library,  a wing with office space,  and a separate gate-keeper’s cottage, stables with a loft and a glasshouse.

Owners Stephe and Karina Jitts purchased it already renovated in 2006 for $1.3 million from local medico Ray Burn and his farmer wife, Emeritus Professor Ann Daniel.