Nick Whitlam plots return to Sydney, lists Scarborough home for $7 million

Seventeen years after Nick Whitlam and his wife Judy left Sydney and their eastern suburbs home to move south to Scarborough they’re coming back, with plans already underway to sell their clifftop designer home.

The son of former prime minister Gough Whitlam is expected to pocket more than $7 million for his designer clifftop residence, setting a high for the South Coast suburb and beating the Wombarra record of $6.31 million set earlier this year by Microsoft Australia boss Steven Worrall.

The Whitlams were previously Paddington locals, owning a slew of terraces, of which the last – on Glenmore Road – was sold in 2004 for $2.75 million. A year after, they sold their landmark Whale Beach getaway for $3.2 million to filmmaker George Miller.

The former investment banker-turned-corporate high-flyer has owned property in Scarborough for 20 years, first buying a cottage and then, in 2010, buying their current home as a then-dilapidated shack for $950,000 and commissioning architect Keith Cottier to design a three-bedroom residence.

Completed eight years ago, the clifftop house with views up the coastline to the north-east is being quietly shopped around by Ray White Helensburgh’s Mattias Samuelsson and Molenaar + McNeice’s Andrew McLeod.

Given plans to buy something “smaller, but not small” and no intentions of living in two principal homes – “I don’t know how people do it with two houses in their lives” – the couple are already scouting digs in the Paddington and Woollahra area.

Buying up big in Manly

Hotel mogul Sam Arnaout looks like he’s planning to spend more time in Manly. The chief of Iris Capital already owns the local landmark Hotel Steyne and recently picked up the Ivanhoe Hotel for about $60 million, but it’s his residential plans that show a more personal interest.

Arnaout has bought a duplex on the waterfront at Little Manly Cove for more than $12.5 million amid talk locally he’s expected to convert it into a single residence as a retreat from his penthouse in the Bennelong building across the harbour.

Records show Arnaout bought the property in two parts, first paying $7.5 million in July for the lower levels, and completing the purchase a few weeks later when former Channel Seven programmer Glen Kinging’s home above hit the market through Max Walls International’s Anthony Walls for about $5.2 million.

Stonehenge up for sale

Macquarie chairman Peter Warne and his wife Frances have wasted no time listing their heritage-listed Mosman trophy home following their recent downsizer purchase around the corner for $16 million.

The couple’s 1903-built mansion Stonehenge, on one of Clifton Gardens’s largest estates of 2090 square metres with a tennis court and swimming pool, is being offered with a $23 million guide through Ray White Lower North Shore’s Geoff Smith and Richard Harding, ending almost 30 years of ownership.

The heritage-listed mansion last traded amid a property market crash in 1992 but still managed to set a street record at the time of $2.75 million for Les and Judy Houlton, but not before they handed the keys over to the late writer and film-maker Bob Ellis to be used as a backdrop in The Nostradamus Kid he was directing at the time, starring Noah Taylor.

Hourigans pop up in Mosman

Eastern suburbs and Mosman shoppers don’t traditionally cross paths on the house-hunting trail given the former clearly prefer to pay a $10 million premium, but perhaps soaring high-end prices might change that?

Certainly, Anthony Hourigan and Monique D’Arcy-Irvine, co-founders of their international recruitment firm Hourigan International, were expected to pop up on the Bellevue Hill title records after they sold their Elizabeth Bay pad in March for $12 million, but records show the couple have instead emerged in Mosman, buying an architect Michael Robilliard-designed residence on 1500 square metres for $16.75 million.

Raine & Horne Mosman’s Brendan Warner had a $15.5 million guide but sold within weeks thanks to offers from three parties.

Tracks shack fetches $9m

Half a century after the surfers’ bible Tracks magazine was founded in a beachside shack at Whale Beach by John Witzig, David Elfick and film-maker Albe Falzon, the house has sold on the quiet for $9 million.

Taking the keys to the original digs is Travelogic founder Craig Smith, who only six months ago sold his Tamarama home to Citi’s London markets head Marcus Satha for $14.3 million.

The well-positioned house on Whale Beach Road has been renovated internally, but thankfully not destroyed since it last traded in 2010 for $4.15 million. Records show it was sold by LJ Hooker’s David and BJ Edwards on behalf of Robyn Jarvis.