Todd McKenney farewells Sydney, set to sell $5m suburban idyll

Celebrities rarely volunteer to open up their homes to relative strangers, especially when they don’t come carrying cameras, but Todd McKenney isn’t like most high-profile entertainers. When a random fan asked to sit in on his rehearsals at his Pymble home 11 years ago, he said why not.

“That one request soon spread to become a fairly regular event,” McKenney said. But instead of one or two fans watching on, the numbers quickly blew out, so McKenney created a waitlist on Facebook. The result was his high-tea soiree held every few weeks, hosting up to 40 people at a time.

The last of those shows was held recently on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to clear a backlog on the waitlist before McKenney put his home up for sale in time for Spring with a $5 million guide.

The September 26 deadline on expressions of interest will end McKenney’s 15 years in the 1918-built house that he purchased for $2.285 million back in 2009 when he was a judge on Dancing With The Stars.

At the time, McKenney’s friends tried to talk him out of it, saying it was too much to swap the eastern beaches, where he had been for decades, for a big four-bedroom house with a pool on almost 2200 square metres in suburbia.

“But I’ve loved it,” McKenney said. “I opened it up to high teas and charity events and have ended up staying here twice as long as I have any of my previous places.”

Paul Langsam, of Raine & Horne Double Bay, who sold McKenney’s former home in Bronte, and son Ben Langsam have scored the listing given McKenney’s plans to move to Melbourne to support his daughter Charlotte during her last year of high school.

Terrigal high

Used car dealer-turned-rich lister Tony Denny is set to test the strength of the Central Coast’s high-end apartment market, listing his penthouse in Terrigal’s Elysium building up for $10 million to $12 million.

Denny kept the penthouse as his own after his Central Real Capital boutique development company completed the beachside complex about 2021, given his plans to use it as a weekend getaway from his Killcare Heights acreage home.

But Denny, who is worth an estimated $790 million on this year’s AFR Rich List 200, has had a rethink on a few of his property moves of late. Plans to sell his Point Piper house, which he bought for $19.5 million in 2020, have been binned despite an offer of $46 million, and there is talk he might be looking to swap the Terrigal beachside pad for a Bondi one.

McGrath’s Matt Steinwede has been given the job of selling Denny’s five-bedroom spread, complete with private lift from a six-car garage and high-end finishes throughout, likely setting a new high for apartments on the Central Coast and even topping Newcastle’s $8.5 million apartment record set last year by Michael and Karen Hope, of the Hope Estate Hunter Valley winery.

Real estate aphrodisiac

Amid the flurry of listings hitting the market in time for this weekend’s official start to the Spring selling season comes the Newtown home of the Whitlams frontman Tim Freedman.

The September 14 auction and $2 million guide by Raine & Horne’s Michael Harris comes 20 years after Freedman purchased the three-bedroom digs for $777,500.

Freedman is a long-time Newtown local.

Records show he used to own the terrace next door, having purchased it in 2001 for $320,000 and sold it in 2009 for $570,000.

Burradoo buyers

Novelist and TV and Film producer Posie Graeme-Evans and her husband, production designer Andrew Blaxland have popped up among Burradoo’s recent slew of buyers.

Records show the couple’s investment company has paid $3.8 million for a four-bedroom house on almost 3000 square metres after the house was offered for sale by Angus Campbell-Jones.

Also buying into Burradoo recently is medico Susan Conde, the daughter of the late 2UE owner Stewart Lamb.

Conde sold her former olive grove Woodlands earlier this year for $7.5 million and swapped it for a house opposite Bowral Golf Club for $2.7 million.

Of course, Burradoo’s best buyer this year is billionaire Annie Cannon-Brookes, who paid $14.5 million for the historic Anglewood House after a do-up by Matthew “Ched” Csidei, the latter of whom has since taken his money down the road to buy Knoyle for $8 million from antique dealers Gary and Maryanne Nolan.

Still in the Southern Highlands, the corporate interests of Shawn Browne, boss of mining resources firm AME Group, have added to his Kangaloon property interests, paying $7.3 million for the Rosebank property next door.

The almost 60-hectare property was initially listed for $8.5 million by James Hall and was owned by the Schofield family for the past 70 years.