Surry Hills house record smashed thanks to $11m sale, closes gap with Paddington

The Surry Hills house price record was smashed late this week when self-storage businessman Marco Camuglia sold his historic residence Italianate House for more than $11 million.

The sale not only reminds us that the high-end market operates in a different sphere to the mainstream market even in a pandemic, but closes the gap between the Surry Hills record and that of its upmarket eastern suburbs neighbour Paddington.

Paddington’s record high has stook at $11.85 million since 2015 when the former Windsor Castle hotel was first bought by hotelier Ben May and again when the same residence was sold a year later to investment banker David Nolan.

The bullish sale result is even more surprising given the Surry Hills record has long been dominated by converted warehouses.

Italianate House first hit the market in 2018 with $13.5 million-plus hopes, but was withdrawn from the market and relisted this year by The Agency’s Ben Collier with a $11 million to $12 million guide.

Collier declined to reveal the result, confirming only that it has sold. It is expected to have sold inside the range.

The 1890s terrace was previously headquarters to the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons before Camuglia bought it in 2011 for $3.15 million and commissioned an extraordinary redesign by architect Renato D’Ettorre.

The four-bedroom house is set on 530 square metres and includes a swimming pool, through carriageway and separate apartment in the converted 1850s sandstone stables, but no garaging.

It tops the $7.95 million high set by a converted warehouse sold by cardiac surgeon David Marshman and his artist wife Melinda in 2016.

New addition to the menu in Watsons Bay 

Celebrity chef Guillaume Brahimi has bought a free-standing cottage in Watsons Bay just doors away from his Camp Cove home.

Records show the three-bedroom house was bought for $4.5 million in a family trust, of which the co-directors are his former wife Sanchia Brahimi and her new partner, lawyer Paul Smith.

The historic cottage scored a redesign more than a decade ago by architect firm Durbach Block Jaggers, long before it last traded in 2014 for $2.6 million when bought by Ken Dalley, son of noted developer John Dalley.

The sale by Raine & Horne Double Bay’s Dion Markovics and Peter Starr comes just a week after Starr sold architect Nick Tobias a 1970s-style brick house up the road for $5.1 million, following his split from writer and former model Miranda Darling.

All about location in Seals Rocks 

At first glance the fibro fisherman’s cottage at Seal Rocks doesn’t look like the sort of weekend getaway usually owned by the various titans of Australia’s corporate landscape.

But former Leighton Holdings boss Wal King has an eclectic property portfolio that includes not only his waterfront pile in Woolwich but his landmark Palm Beach house, a clifftop house in Whale Beach, an apartment in The Bennelong building at Circular Quay, a two-storey pad in Darlinghurst’s Republic 2 and his Port Douglas weekender.

Not that King’s Seal Rocks cottage is without its own merits. Marketed as Tradewinds, it comes with two bedrooms, one bathroom that doubles as a laundry and a dirt driveway with no garaging.

Indeed, the $1.55 million guide being given to buyers is not much more than the land value for the 600 square metres, according to Pacific Palms’ Greg Hope.

Ultimately, it is the location directly opposite the pristine sand of Boat Beach that no doubt caught the eye of King and his wife Denise when they paid $300,000 for it in 1991.

Rival bidders push Wu to $8m  

The daughter of Chinese real estate mogul “Frank” Po Sum Wu, Wallis Wu, has snapped up a luxury $8 million apartment in Milsons Point.

The purchase is just shy of the $8.2 million Wu paid a year ago for the lavish Bellagio estate in Bowral, before she and her mother Lam Li Wu added the block next door for $3.2 million to create one of the largest privately held estate’s in the Bowral township.

Wu, 36, sits on the board of property giant Central China Real Estate, which was founded by her billionaire dad, a lauded leader of China’s real estate industry and a member of China’s National People’s Congress.

Wu snr also shared equal 18th ranking on Forbes China Philanthropy List in 2018 with another billionaire Sydney home owner Chau Chak Wing, renowned locally for his $70 million purchase of James and Erica Packer’s Vaucluse mansion La Mer in 2015.

The Wu family were forced to pay well above the $6 million guide set by Di Jones’ Nigel Mukhi thanks to five registered buyers at the auction.

This isn’t the first apartment in the Mirvac-built Cavill building to sell for more than expected. Jailed murderer Ron Medich had to outbid five buyers at auction in 2017 to pay $4.9 million for the sub-penthouse – $400,000 above the guide.

Rennies bid farewell to Hunters Hill 

Hong Kong-based expat Andrew Rennie has clearly abandoned plans of a return to Sydney any time soon given his wife Sarah has offloaded their historic Hunters Hill manor Hestock for just shy of $8 million.

Rennie is the former Goldman Sachs partner whom James Packer turned to after he fell out with UBS boss Matthew Grounds in 2018, before Rennie left the bank to join privately owned hedge fund manager Segantii Capital.

The Rennies have owned the 1881-built residence on the north-facing side of the peninsula since 2007, paying $5.3 million and adding a Palm Beach holiday house a decade later for $5.75 million.

Title records show that having sold the Hunters Hill home through McGrath’s Tracey Dixon, the family has also picked up a charming weatherboard house in Rozelle for $2.33 million for their sons Ed and James, as one does.

Still in Hunters Hill, there are home upgrade plans afoot for Michelle Gazal, of the wealthy property development family, and her husband Jaskirat Gill, of law firm McCabe Curwood, after the couple lodged a caveat on the home of shipping container businessman David Wright and his wife Minerva McKell-Wright.

It also explains why Gazal, daughter of developer Jason Gazal, and Gill have put their designer two-level apartment in Drummoyne up for grabs for $2.29 million with Daniel Patterson, of Cobden & Hayson.

McGrath’s Tracey Dixon is not disclosing the sale price of the Wright home, but sources say more than $5 million is expected to show on settlement.

Off-the-market action heats up   

Sydney’s off-market is proving the most active property market for high-end home owners of late. Take the Rose Bay residence of property investor Herman Melkman and his wife Frances.

It has been quietly on offer with a few agents recently as the Melkmans prepare to move to the almost renovated house on the Double Bay waterfront they bought two years ago for $18.3 million.

Melkman’s Ogen Nominees investment vehicle has landed a few decent commercial property sales over the years, of which the most impressive was the $95 million pocketed in 2015 for the Redfern Mall on Cleveland Street.

The hillside residence set above Kambala private girls school on Rose Bay’s Chamberlain Avenue last traded in 2000 for $4.03 million.

Ballard’s Paul Ephron declined to reveal the result, leaving it to sources to reveal he was asking $13 million to $14 million before it sold.

Corporate big wig Eric “the Rhino” Dodd and his wife Vanessa have also done a behind-closed-doors deal for a house on Mosman’s Balmoral Slopes, paying $7.8 million for the four-bedroom house of Bill Widin, owner of the Hunter Valley winery Leogate Estate.

Dodd, the chairman of Integrity Insurance and First American Title in Australia, is moving from nearby Georges Heights where he recently sold his parkside contemporary house through Ray White Mosman’s Geoff Smith for $6 million to Papua New Guinea poultry producers Phillip and Cathrine​ Leahy.

Also trading out of Mosman on the quiet is Sarah Salmon, wife of Assetz​ founder Ben Salmon.

LJ Hooker Avnu’s Michael Coombs was keeping schtum on the deal, but sources say he was showing the house to buyers for about $9.5 million.

The Salmons bought in 2009 for $3.1 million and soon after commissioned the designer three-level residence by architect Susan Rothwell.

The couple still have their Palm Beach weekender, bought in 2014 for $3.8 million from former ALP powerbroker Laurie Brereton and retired judge Tricia Kavanagh.