Westfield heiress pays $8.6m for Bondi duplex, double what it sold for a year ago

Westfield heiress Monica Saunders-Weinberg has deepened her affinity for North Bondi real estate, adding yet another Hastings Parade property to her fast-growing local portfolio, making it almost $23 million worth of property purchased on the one street alone in the past 12 months.

The billionaire philanthropist daughter of Westfield co-founder John Saunders has paid $8.6 million for a duplex directly next door to a Federation bungalow she picked up in February for $6.55 million, and up the road from a renovated house she bought a year ago for $7.8 million.

And that’s not including an apartment in the Cadigal building overlooking Bondi Beach she bought for $4.5 million in 2007.

Sources say all three recent property purchases are investments for her three kids – which seems right, given all are owned in company names that are a mash-up of their names – but as the latest two properties are neighbours it creates a larger 720-square-metre parcel that could be an ideal site to build a student hangout for their post-schooling life.

Either way, it’s a good deal for the vendors, film industry art director Aaron Crothers and costume designer Jackline Sassine, who bought the duplex a year ago for $4.05 million.

Still with North Bondi’s children of the rich list, Saphira Moran, daughter of nursing home scion Mark Moran and his wife Evette, has bought her first home for $6.475 million.

The five-bedroom house with a pool puts her in the same suburb as her parents, who bought on the Ben Buckler headland in 2018 for $11.5 million from former retail chief Mark McInnes as a downsize from their recently sold $16 million Point Piper home.

A profit to dream of

It looks like it’s good times in the home of former Seven boss Tim Worner and his wife Katrina this week after the latter sold adjoining semis in Manly for more than $6.6 million.

The exact sale price was left undisclosed, given no comment from Clarke & Humel’s Michael Clarke, but sources say it was listed for $6 million to $6.6 million before the guide was raised and it sold above the original hopes.

Not bad for two-bedroom cottages picked up as a package deal for $1.37 million back in 2003 before Worner had even been appointed to head up the network, nor even met Amber Harrison and started an affair that would later make headlines around the country.

The happy couple are already Manly locals, having purchased designer digs on beachfront reserve at Fairy Bower five years ago for $9.5 million.

Joint sale in Darling Point

Media personality Prue MacSween and restaurateur Jonathan Barthelmess have banded together to make the most of the booming eastern suburbs property market by listing their jointly owned block of three apartments in Darling Point for $15 million.

MacSween and family are long-time residents of the well-positioned Yarranabbe Road block and its harbour views. They purchased their lavishly furnished first-floor spread in 1986 for $165,000 and were joined in the building by Barthelmess in 2015 when he bought the ground-floor spread for $1.75 million. He added the top floor three years ago for $2.5 million.

It’s good timing for Barthelmess, who co-owns Potts Point’s The Apollo Restaurant with Sam Christie. He and his partner Augusta Goldsmith bought Whale Beach digs earlier this year for $7.4 million.

Mother-and-son agents Jane and Samuel Schumann, of Raine & Horne Potts Point, have set an October 26 auction.

Fairfax sale is good news

Seven years after the Sacred Heart nuns sold their historic Southern Highlands property Kerever Park for $3.685 million it has returned to the market for more than $15 million.

Its value has been boosted not only by the soaring values of recent years, but also by an extensive restoration and renovation by antique dealers Gary and Maryanne Nolan, who have reinstated its original name of Knoyle.

The main Queen Anne-style residence dates back to the 1880s when it was designed by London architect Maurice Adams as a country retreat for Charles Fairfax, grandson of the Sydney Morning Herald’s founder, John Fairfax.

According to an ad in 1906, Fairfax offered it for lease as a five-bedroom main residence complete with all the luxuries of the day like “hot and cold water laid on”, a tennis lawn and stabling for six horses.

The Sacred Heart purchased it in 1943 for £7600, renaming it in honour of Mother Alix de Kerever, adding the schoolhouse and using it as a boarding school until the 1960s, when it was designated for retreats and conferences.

The 2.69-hectare property is listed with Sandie Dunn and Karl Zabel, of Dunne Southen Highlands.

When one penthouse isn’t enough

Vanessa Chia Chia Tay, the granddaughter of the late Singaporean billionaire Tee Peng Tay, has secured adjoining penthouses in Point Piper’s landmark Liskeard building for a total of $14.5 million.

Tay originally purchased in the block of 14 last year, paying $6.7 million to rich-list neighbour and used-car dealer Tony Denny, and adding the pad directly next door in recent weeks for $7.8 million after a bullish auction that had started with an original guide of $5.5 million.

Tay, whose family are ranked by Forbes as among Singapore’s richest, has bought and sold a slew of Point Piper properties over the years, including an apartment sold to News Corp’s boss, Robert Thomson, in 2016 for almost $4.7 million and her home a few doors from the Liskeard building on Wentworth Street where she and her lawyer husband Alex Ding bought in 2012, just doors from her little brother Jason’s $15 million digs.

Websters offload McMahons Point terrace

The exodus of Sydney’s well-heeled citizenry for more bucolic fields continues – the most recent of which is former NSW Greiner government minister Robert Webster and his author wife Caro, who have listed their McMahons Point terrace for $7 million.

The couple were previously Mosman locals until 2015 when they sold their Federation home for $5 million to buy a five-bedroom terrace in what was originally part of the Greythwaite Estate in McMahons Point for $3.575 million.

Given plans to move to Orange, the couple have listed the grand Victorian terrace with Ray White Lower North Shore’s David Gillan.