Fast Search co-founder Thomas Fussell sets $7.7m Central Coast auction high

A penchant for high-end real estate has long been shared by Louise Fussell and her husband Thomas, a UK private equity investor who co-founded intelligence software Fast Search and sold it to Microsoft in 2008 for $1.2 billion.

There’s their  London home, a Mosman waterfront trophy home Danieli, which was leased by pop star Rita Ora earlier this year, and their Hong Kong residence in the exclusive neighbourhood of The Peak. The latter is one of seven townhouses developed by the family of billionaire Li Ka-shing, one of which was sold to the family of Macau tycoon Stanley Ho for $157 million. Nice houses.

So it should be little surprise to know the Fussells were the mystery buyers behind a hotly contested Pearl Beach getaway that recently set an auction record of $7.7 million for the Central Coast.

The charming timber cottage on the north-facing headland overlooking the beach has been owned for the past 40 years by the Crebbin family. It was listed by Coast Realty’s Stuart Gan with a $6 million guide.

There were a dozen bidders registered for the sale of the fairly humble, but well-positioned digs, of which 10 parties pushed the result $1.7 million higher than expectations.

Bondi Beach record

Former polo player and hedge fund operative Spencer Young has set an established apartment record of $100,000 per square metre for his Bondi Beach pad thanks to an off-market sale of close to $10 million.

Not the glamorous penthouse he had listed last year for $25 million that was pulled from the market when lockdown hit earlier this year. It’s his garden apartment in the same triplex that he purchased in 2018 for $6.5 million that has resold for a motza.

That left the remaining apartment in the block – designed by architects Graham Humphrey and Christopher Grinham – to Kiwi rich-lister Ben Cook, who bought his pad in 2015 for $3.9 million from former Nine boss Jeff Browne.

Young’s sale of his garden apartment – and the resumption of post-lockdown, boom-time trading – looks to have prompted him to return his penthouse to the market.

The three-bedroom spread (complete with a DA adding about 50 square metres to the internal living space) goes to auction on December 11 through Raine & Horne’s Martin Maskin and GLPM Project’s Luis Guiance.

Nice present from granddad

Remember that time your granddad bought you the $15 million house in Bellevue Hill? Ella Lizor might, after family patriarch Harry Triguboff did just that in August.

The purchase was likely what prompted Lizor and her husband Nir Lizor, both executives at the family’s property development giant Meriton, to list their Vaucluse home this week with Ray White Double Bay’s Ashley Bierman, setting an $11 million to $12 million guide ahead of a December 11 auction.

The five-bedroom residence has been renovated throughout and scored Will Dangar gardens since the Lizors purchased it in 2015 for $6.6 million from Harriet Waugh, wife of hotelier Mitchell Waugh, when the latter were trading up to their $9.3 million digs on nearby Hillside Avenue.

Ingham gives Elizabeth Bay the boot

Shoe designer Tamie Ingham sold her Elizabeth Bay pad this week, scoring almost $1 million more than its bullish $6.5 million guide.

Ingham had only recently joined forces with Jasmine Stefanovic to found their cult shoe label Mara & Mine in 2010 when she purchased the two-bedroom spread in the waterfront The Palms complex for $3 million.

Raine & Horne Elizabeth Bay’s Samuel Schumann had five registered at the auction that opened at $6.5 million and sold for $7.45 million.

The art of the sale

Artists Gillie and Marc Schattner have followed the well-worn route from Centennial Park to Woollahra, buying the designer digs of New York-based Macquarie banker Alan James and Jennifer Fletcher for $10.5 million.

The purchase follows the sale of their Federation mansion in Centennial Park in July for $12 million to Grant Samuel co-chief executive Guy Fergusson and his wife Georgina, almost doubling the $6.5 million they paid for it four years ago.

The Schattners, best known for their anthropomorphic dog and rabbit sculptures, were previously based in Bellevue Hill until 2016 when they sold their home for $5.15 million to highly ranked mining executive Jun Qiu and his wife Kun Deng.