Pub heir Phillip De Angelis leads 2021 push for family compounds

If there is a standout class of buyer this year helping to fuel Sydney’s high-end property boom it has to be the next-door neighbour.

After all, Aspen and Bali are out of bounds and lockdowns have given home owners everywhere a hankering for more space, prompting cashed-up Sydneysiders to start eyeing off the real estate beyond the back fence.

Millionaire pub heir Phillip De Angelis was an early adopter in March when he and his dad, pub baron Arch De Angelis, bought the waterfront house two doors away from the family’s Hunters Hill home for $9 million.

In October, when McGrath’s Tracey Dixon listed the waterfront house in between the two De Angelis residences for $11 million it was a no-brainer who would be a good buyer.

Local sources pinned the purchase of the four-bedroom house with a private jetty on De Angelis Jnr,  suggesting he did so for between $13 million and $14 million. At least the bullish price secures three houses in a row on a 3400-square-metre parcel of prime, north-facing waterfront land.

No doubt helping to fund it is the upcoming sale of De Angelis’s Bondi Beach pad in the Cadigal building. It goes to auction on December 4 through PPD’s Alexander Phillips for $6.5 million.

Directly behind the De Angelis family, former Ten senior executive Jon Marquard didn’t so much expand his holding but upgraded it, buying the house next door for $10.5 million, then selling his for $9.9 million.

Foreign exchange dealer Tony Collick continues his buy-up of his Rose Bay neighbours. Having staked a claim on the waterfront last year when he purchased the modernist landmark Lapin House for $16.6 million, he has since been jostling to buy up the block of five apartments directly behind.

The director of HighLow Markets has spent a little more than $13.5 million buying four of the five apartments, the most recent of which was for $4.5 million in October from Pamela Borne.

That leaves one to go, as Michael and Roshan Robinson would know.

Film producer and property developer Rebel Penfold-Russell expanded her hold on Palm Beach by $10 million after she bought the heritage-listed house Windyridge.

Built in 1919 by the Verrills family, it makes it three in a row for Penfold-Russell and rounds out her 4500-square-metre parcel. She first bought on the ridgeline overlooking the surf in the mid-1980s and added next door for $3.6 million in 2006.

Australia’s youngest billionaire, Nick Molnar, and his wife Gabrielle are big fans of their North Bondi neighbours’ homes. All six of them, as it happens, that make up the 1970s block of apartments on the Ben Buckler headland that they bought out for about $18.5 million.

Still with the co-founders of Afterpay, David Hancock and his wife Fiona have made more room for themselves in Paddington. Having purchased for $7.65 million in 2018 they have added the Victorian villa next door for $6.5 million to create a 700-square-metre compound.

Bellevue Hill should be billed the family compound capital of Australia thanks to the Packer family’s efforts over three generations to create the 1.2-hectare Cairnton estate, not to mention the Murdochs’ ever-expanding Le Manoir estate.

Former UBS star banker David Di Pilla and his wife Victoria, of the wealthy Salteri family, were clearly content with just the one Bellevue Hill mansion when in 2009 they bought the $9 million home of Lisa Keighery, widow of designer Mark Keighery.

That is until this year, when they added next door for another $9 million. DA plans to demolish the house to make way for more garden and a tennis court are now before council.

Former Macquarie Group chief executive Nicholas Moore could have potentially lost a good chunk of his ocean view from his long-held Whale Beach weekender when the 1940s cottage Islay hit the market. But there’s no risk of that now after he paid $7.31 million for it in June.

Westfield heiress Monica Saunders-Weinberg bought more garden space for her $20 million Bellevue Hill mansion, first in 2016 for $6 million and then, earlier this year, adding another neighbouring house for $5.9 million.

Her sister Betty Klimenko went a few better on her Vaucluse compound. Having already acquired a slew of her immediate neighbours, she paid $6.6 million for yet another house to create a new playground out the back, taking her holding to almost 3500 square metres with views from the Pacific Ocean to the harbour.

Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban are no strangers to buying up their neighbours’ homes. She owns a super-penthouse atop the Latitude building in Milsons Point consolidated from two apartments, bought for $6 million and more than $7 million each, as well as a third pad in the building added a decade ago for $2.68 million.

So when another apartment in the building came up for sale this year, Kidman jumped on it, paying $2.78 million in a corporate trust held by her long-time friend Annette Rechner.

Fund manager “Owen” Ouyang Chen and his wife, Xiao Hong Li are set to form the largest privately held parcel in Northwood totalling 7500 square metres of water frontage when they settle on the Rossi family estate at more than $24 million.

But even the Northwood consolidation is left in the shade of the northern beaches holding amassed by Glenn Botha, owner of electrical engineering firm Thompson Controls, and his family.

The Botha family are now the largest landholders in Bayview after two of his neighbours’ houses were sold for close to $5.4 million each.

It takes Botha’s holding to 2.4 hectares at a cost of more than $15 million for three houses in a row, topping the vast holding of Bayview’s other property moguls, superyacht builders Louise and Matthew Baxter.

Earlier this year the Baxters grew their Bayview home to almost 1.4 hectares after they bought their neighbours’ houses at a cost of more than $14 million. As one does, apparently.