Yachtie Chris Meehan buys Palm Beach trophy home Gaelforce for $18.7m

Chris Meehan, the New Zealand property developer, best known this side of the ditch as the former head of Belle Property and close friend to Crown Princess Mary of Denmark, has made a grand return to Sydney’s property books after a 15-year absence.

Without stepping inside the country Meehan has purchased the Palm Beach trophy home Gaelforce for $18.7 million sight unseen from jet setters Francesco and Gayle Boglione, owners of England’s acclaimed Petersham Nurseries Cafe that for years was run by local chef Skye Gyngell.

Meehan was last named on local title records in 2006 when he pocketed $4 million for his house in Darling Point’s Babworth Estate, which incidentally sold to luxury boat dealer Steve Hannes in recent weeks.

Twenty years ago when Princess Mary was known as Mary Donaldson, Meehan was her boss at Belle, and from all accounts remains friends of the Danish royals, having faced off against Prince Frederik in the years since for Race Week at Hamilton Island.

Meehan’s boating interests make him a perfect buyer for his new Spanish mission-style getaway Gaelforce, given its deepwater frontage on Pittwater and private jetty, although it is the glamorous redesign since Gayle purchased it from her friend socialite Amanda Nankervis for almost $5.5 million in 2006 that has made it this year’s highest house sale in Palm Beach.

It was sold by LJ Hooker’s Peter Robinson and David Edwards, the latter of whom has listed the clifftop house on Whale Beach Road of Jill Forster, wife of Coca Cola’s former general counsel George Forster, for $12 million.

The designer digs last traded in 2013 when the Forsters purchased it for $4.5 million from world-renowned micro surgeon Marco Lanzetta and his wife, Maria Braca-Lanzetta.

Ticking off the list

Former Young Rich Listers Robert Chamberlain and Rishi Khilnani both made their debut on the Financial Review list in 2018, worth an estimated $32 million, and three years later, coincidence has thrown their names together again as buyers in the ultra-prestige $10 million-plus range.

Chamberlain, the 37-year-old who founded airfare comparison website Huno Group, has emerged as the mystery buyer of a $12 million penthouse in The Pier at Walsh Bay that was sold by McGrath’s Richard Shalhoub for Rowena and Wayne Hamilton less than six months after they bought it for $11 million.

Meanwhile, Khilnani, co-head of small-cap investments at Paradice Investment, has bought his first Sydney home, paying $10.3 million for a Potts Point terrace.

Khilnani’s new digs purchased from McGrath’s Stella Doumanis is the third-most-expensive single terrace sold in Sydney, eclipsed by the nearby digs sold by Heidi Onisforou for $13 million in 2016 and another sold two years later for $14.7 million to corporate interests of Rupert Murdoch’s daughter Prue MacLeod.

Meanwhile, Doumanis has bought another terrace across the road for $7 million from entrepreneur Daniel Hakim.

Can’t bear Paddington

Maryanne Satouris, of the Peters of Kensington retail family, has listed her Paddington terrace amid talk she is the buyer of Lucy May’s Point Piper home for about $10 million.

May’s sale – through Laing + Simmons’s Luxe Listing’s star agent D’Leanne Lewis – was a decent windfall on the $6.2 million the former hotelier paid for it in 2018, and on the $7.5 million offered for it last year when her plans to move to Byron Bay were first mooted.

Satouris wants $4 million for her Windsor Street terrace through The Agency’s Ben Collier.

Woo-hoo in Woollahra

A week after Monika Malone, former wife of iinet co-founder Michael Malone, listed her 1930s Woollahra residence for auction on September 23, it has sold.

This is the “baby Grand” that was designed by acclaimed architect  F. Glynn Gilling and long owned by former Vogue Living editor Robyn Holt and her actor husband Jim Holt until five years ago when they sold for $3.75 million in what turns out to have been the start of an exodus of eastern suburbs identities to the Southern Highlands.

It was previously owned by cardiologist Young Yu and his family, who sold to Malone in 2017 for a little more than $4.1 million. Ray White Double Bay’s Michael Finger told buyers a guide of about $4.8 million but given the speed of the sale, expect it to have sold well into the $5 million range.

Michael Malone, who now sits on the board of NBN Co and Seven West Media, is based in Perth, having sold his Southern Highlands property Aberdeen – where he and Monika married in 2015 – for $4.5 million to Portaloo king Malcolm Williams last year.

This time it’s personal

Property developer Ben Isaac, who with his brother Jono formed a syndicate in 2019 that threw the Boathouse restaurant empire a financial lifeline after it almost collapsed, has bought a luxury acreage in Duffys Forest for $8 million.

The five-bedroom residence with a pool and cabana on two hectares sold by Dax and Kate McBurney, of one of Australia’s largest private land developers, Monarch, is a decent step up the property ladder for Isaac from his recently sold $3.95 million Turramurra house.

Going in boots and all

Redback Boot Company boss Mark Cloros has joined the well-traversed road from Mosman to Palm Beach, buying the Snapperman Beach house of furniture king Anthony Scali for about $11 million through Ray White’s Noel Nicholson.

Scali bought the beachfront house for $9 million in late 2019, just months before COVID-19 wreaked havoc worldwide, making it the third property for the family on prized Iluka Road after he bought property developer Denis O’Neil’s double beachfront properties in 2013 for just shy of $12 million.

Cloros is moving from Mosman’s Clifton Gardens, where he sold in June for a bullish $14 million after it was listed with The Agency’s Nic Yates, making a handsome gain on the $3.7 million he paid for it a decade ago.

Bondi musical chairs

Celebrity chef Tomi Bjorck and his wife Minka have bought a newly built duplex in North Bondi for $4.7 million on the quiet.

The purchase of the four-bedroom digs with a swimming pool by the host of Masterchef Finland coincides with the sale of his $6.15 million North Bondi home after a major renovation.

Bjorck and his business partner Samuel Cole shuttered their Bondi eatery Blanca last year in the wake of the COVID-19 lockdowns.