Millennials lead market bonanza, led by online rag-traders to buy $34m Vaucluse house

It’s no secret that online clothes retailers have done well in the wake of COVID-19 lockdowns, but who knew they were making the sort of money to make them trophy-home owners.

Georgia Moore, 30, and Daniel Contos, 31, know it. The co-founders of the highly successful White Fox Boutique are the $34.5 million buyers of the Vaucluse home of Andrews Meat wholesaler Peter Andrews and his wife Irene.

That’s a mighty step up the property ladder from the couple’s Drummoyne worker’s cottage they bought in 2017 for $2.9 million (the latter figure being only marginally more than the $2.35 million stamp duty they’ll owe on the Vaucluse digs when it eventually settles).

And to think they started out selling clothes on eBay in 2013, only to later found their online fashion retailer with a push from influencers such as Shani Grimmond, with her 1.4 million Instagram followers, and Sarah Stevenson’s Sarah’s Day, with 1.2 million.

The Andrews family have no sooner ended their almost half a century of ownership, thanks to the off-market sale by Laing+Simmons Double Bay’s D’Leanne Lewis, than they have found downsizer digs.

The couple are headed for Rose Bay, where independent sources say Ray White Double Bay’s James Ledgerwood recently sold them a three-bedroom garden spread in the boutique Rosewater development for $7.9 million.

The Andrews home was widely tipped to have been bought by another popular millennial and Contos’ fellow Macquarie University graduate, the 32-year-old boss of property developer giant Aqualand, Jin Lin, but Mr Lin’s spokesman has ruled that out.

Don’t expect to see the young couple’s Drummoyne home hit the market, though. Sources say it won’t be sold anytime soon, which suggests the Vaucluse house might be an investment. A rental, perhaps, if Mr Lin needs to rent near his $52 million trophy home Villa Igiea while it is being renovated?

This year’s top sales have been dominated by millennials. Who can forget when Annabelle Shamir, the 30-year-old wife of dealmaker Adam Blumenthal, purchased the $30 million Bellevue Hill renovation job of fashion designer-turned-lifestyle blogger Stephanie Conley-Buhre?

Shamir has since cashed in the North Bondi home she purchased two years ago for $6.3 million, pocketing $11.235 million with no material improvements being made in the meantime.

Property investor William Wu is only 29 but he hasn’t let that stop him from being one of the most prolific property shoppers of the year, although there have been suggestions he had some help from his property developer mother Jing Wang.

Wu has spent more than $110 million on real estate in the past year, including the $25.5 million Bellevue Hill mansion sold by Christie’s Ken Jacobs on behalf of the family of Singapore businessman Ho Whye Chung.

The year’s top sale was by Ellie Malouf, the 25-year-old daughter of former garbo Ian Malouf, who paid $60 million for developer John Boyd’s landmark penthouse atop the ANZ Tower, leaving a beachfront house in Double Bay to be purchased by Ellie’s 21-year-old little sister, Lara, for $35 million, and the $26 million house next door to their mum, Malouf’s wife Larissa.

Property investor Mu Li, 32, has flipped the Watsons Bay beachfront investment he purchased in 2018 for $10.2 million. The Clinton Murray-designed digs have sold for about $13 million, which is good buying for Michelle Malek, wife of investment banker Ron Malek.

The Maleks aren’t expected to move in, given they are already housed on the Vaucluse waterfront. They bought the Mayo family’s home for $20.1 million in 2014 and have only recently completed a Tzannes Associates-designed residence on the site, complete with a tidy tennis court.

Meanwhile, John Angelis, 26, and his fellow Scots College mate Yianni Gourlas, 27, have brought new meaning to the idea of student digs by buying a $10.85 million house in Dover Heights.

The house, designed by architect Michael Folk and featuring five bedrooms, a games room, garaging for five cars, an internal lift and a pool, was marketed as an “architectural masterwork” in the marketing by Ray White Double Bay’s Ashley Bierman.

Angelis’s dad Jim, the founder of Australia’s largest privately-owned insurance broker, Coverforce, that was sold recently for $411 million, has also upgraded his home real estate, buying the Rose Bay trophy home Villa Florida that was listed late last year for $45 million.

Wests Tigers star Daine Laurie, 22,  is among this year’s youngest property shoppers, and doing so on his own efforts.

The fullback from the state’s North Coast has snapped up a one-bedder in the Squillace Architects-designed Hill Street development at Dulwich Hill, making him a homeowner in his new team’s catchment area.

Colliers International declined to reveal Laurie’s purchase price, but the talented playmaker is expected to have paid more than $700,000 for his digs in the K2 Development Group project, given it comes with views to the city.

Still with this year’s self-made youth, Silicon Valley-based Young Rich Lister Stephen Dash has bought a Paddington terrace for $10.3 million from Potts Point-based property industry executive Ben Stewart.

At 37, Dash is already worth an estimated $345 million thanks in large part to his student loan company Credible Labs he founded in 2012 and which was valued at $585 million two years ago when Lachlan Murdoch’s Fox Corporation purchased a majority stake.

Dash purchased the architect Steve Koolloos-designed terrace on the quiet through The Agency’s Ben Collier, who has secured what property watchers will appreciate is a $54,500-per-square-metre rate for the property.

It last traded in 2017 for $7.1 million when sold by Juicy Design’s Tom Williams and his wife Belinda, who commissioned the contemporary redesign.

Country values are expected to soar even higher in the Southern Highlands thanks to the recent acquisition of another 37-year-old, entrepreneur, Peter Crown, who this week was revealed as the buyer of Hume Coal’s 1300-hectare parcel.

Zac Midalia, the 35-year-old fund manager at Alceon, has sold his North Bondi house in all of one day for what sources say was about $3.8 million.

Ray White Double Bay’s Warren Ginsberg had a $3.5 million guide at the first open, but stuck up a sold sticker by the end of that day, more than doubling the $1.71 million Midalia paid for it in 2014.

Midalia and his wife Natasha Linz, daughter of Oporto co-founder Gary Linz, are trading up to a Bellevue Hill house they purchased on the quiet for more than $7 million.

Bennelong vantage point

The Sydney bolthole of Great Barrier Reef Foundation chairman Dr John Schubert and his wife Prue hit the market this week for $15 million to $16.5 million.

The couple are longtime Palm Beach locals, most recently in a house above Kiddies Corner where they bought for more than $8 million in 2003 from Shark Tank’s Andrew Banks.

Dr Schubert, whose resume of former chairmanships includes that of Commonwealth Bank, BHP, Qantas and WorleyParsons, purchased the three-bedroom spread in the Bennelong building with a prime front-row view of the Harbour Bridge for $5.1 million in 2003, when the couple made their Palm Beach home their permanent residence.

Ken Jacobs, of Christie’s International, has the exclusive listing.