Bernard Curran sells out of Point Piper waterfront for close to $30m

TV production company boss Bernard Curran has sold his long-held home on Point Piper’s Wolseley Road on the quiet for close to $28 million after 24 years of owning the waterfront site.

The son of former rich-lister Charles Curran and his wife Eva first purchased the property in 1996 for $1.5 million, later consolidating it with the property next door and commissioning a five-storey duplex designed by architect Andrew Burges, with Will Dangar landscaping.

Curran retained the upper levels with a boatshed on title, and the lower half was sold in January by JP Morgan boss Paul Uren and his wife Jennifer for $16.6 million to Macquarie Capital’s David Roseman.

Talk of the sale through Pillinger’s Brad Pillinger comes as a caveat on title reveals the buyers are dentists Gloria Shih and Lawrence Lau.

Indeed, Pillinger sold the 1920s Vaucluse manor of Shih and Lau earlier this year for about $20 million to property investor William Wenhao Wu, the 28-year-old investor who has snapped up almost $100 million worth of high-end property in the eastern suburbs with his mother, Jing Wang.

The sale of Curran’s duplex is just the latest among his Wolseley Road neighbours. Seven’s Bruce McWilliam kicked off the rash of activity early this year when his waterfront investment house was sold by Pillinger for more than $32 million.

Still with the McWilliam property sell-off of earlier this year, a house on Wolseley Road sold for $9 million (again by Pillinger) has settled in the name of former Seven executive Brad Lancken.

The purchase by Lancken, now head of private equity group Liverpool Partners, almost doubles the $4.55 million McWilliam paid for it in 2016 when it was billed as a Best Western-style house.

 Belling and Sealey trade up

Former Ten newsreader Natarsha Belling and her husband, head of Renault Australia Glen Sealey, are trading up from their Lane Cove North home, buying a house in the waterfront suburb of Longueville for $6.1 million.

The couple’s upgrade to a five-bedroom house with a swimming pool on almost 1000 square metres comes a year after Belling was unceremoniously sacked by Ten after two decades with the broadcaster.

Belling was not out of work long, however. Within months Seven had hired her as a panellist on The Morning Show, she fronts the podcast Your Morning Agenda, and in April joined Southern Cross Austereo’s new digital-only breakfast radio show hosted by Steve Price.

Belling and Sealey have been Lane Cove North locals since 2002, paying $731,000 for the Coolaroo Road bungalow.

Mercado sells La Perouse pad

TV historian Andrew Mercado has put his beachside apartment in La Perouse up for auction next Wednesday, with plans to scout new digs in his new hometown of Newcastle.

The former Channel [V] presenter upgraded to the La Perouse apartment in 2010 from his Coogee pad, paying $790,000 at the time, but moved to the mid-North Coast in 2017 when he purchased the old South West Roxy Cinema.

Mercado sold the cinema two years ago, turning to writing his recently released book Queer History of Australian TV.

Geoff Gilles, of Century 21 Gilles Property, has set a $1.3 million guide for the two-bedroom apartment.

Brian Adams sells up in Surry Hills

Showbiz veteran and property investor Brian Adams is selling his Surry Hills penthouse home and the commercial building it crowns, Briad House.

The former actor and host of Ten’s Tonight Show built the five-level building in the 1990s, complete with a commercial showroom off the entry, three levels of office space, a mezzanine office, garaging for five cars and the penthouse as his own.

Sotheby’s Jaime Upton and Ray White Commercial’s Peter Kotzias have set a $14 million guide ahead of an October 26 auction.