Sold: Ex-Vocation executive Brett Whitford cashes in on $22m Mosman home

Mosman has clocked up another trophy sale in the run up to Christmas with almost $22 million exchanged on the Mosman home of Glenburn Private Capital chairman Brett Whitford.

The exact result remains undisclosed, given no comment on the deal by Michael Coombs, of LJ Hooker Avnu, but sources say it sold at the top of the range. The Burran Avenue residence carried a $20 million to $22 million guide most recently.

It is the third sale in the $20 million-plus range this year in Mosman, topped by the $22 million February sale of the Adamo family mansion to Mengyao Ling, a business partner to Olympian Michael Klim in his Milk & Co skincare range.

Whitford listed his prized trophy home in Mosman’s Golden Triangle a month after that sale amid plans to make a permanent sea change to his South Coast farm.

“Buying Burran Avenue was a real privilege for me, having lived in housing commission when I was young and going to Merrylands High School, but it’s just not me,” Whitford told Title Deeds in March.

“That said, we’re in no rush to sell. If the economic situation playing out makes it a bad time to sell, we’re happy to hold out for the right time to sell or right buyer.”

Whitford was a senior executive at education outfit Vocation at the time he bought the clifftop house on Burran Avenue in 2014 for $16 million from Lavender Bay-bound recruitment industry boss Geoff Morgan and his wife Roslyn.

But a few months later, Whitford resigned after a fallout with Vocation’s management, only to see his shareholding plummet the next year when the group was placed in voluntary administration.

The start-up investor has not been idle since, having been adjunct professor at the University of Technology Sydney until 2016 and more recently diverting his interests towards his 57-hectare Angus cattle farm at Jamberoo, where he is set to oversee a move to sustainable farming techniques and become more involved in the Gilmore electorate in the wake of the devastating bushfires.

The third-highest sale in Mosman this year was the $20 million deal on the Alex Popov-designed residence on Balmoral slopes of childcare mogul Brendan McAssey to shopping centre uber-agent Simon Rooney and his wife Kristen.