Vaucluse mansions sold for $32m three years ago return to market for $45m-plus

The Vaucluse mansion sold by Angela Teplitsky, former wife of prominent property developer Michael Teplitsky, for $21 million three years ago is set to be returned to the market with the house next door as part of a development deal worth more than $45 million.

The Teplitsky sale was regarded as a bullish result at the time, given it had traded just two years earlier for $17 million when sold by dentist Le Tran, who only held it for two years after he bought it for $14 million from property developer Jacques Kurdian.

It was one of two houses purchased in 2018 for a total of $32 million by a trust, Moshav Developments. Despite Woollahra Council rejecting plans for four Luigi Rosselli-designed residences, an amended DA was given the green light last week by the Land and Environment Court.

Nicholas Heaton of CBRE said there is no guide, but “the site is worth $45 million as it is, and the DA adds a premium”.

But there is some confusion as to who will be the lucky recipient of such capital gain. The paper trail indicates it is Moshav’s sole director Tal Silberman, but well-placed eastern suburbs sources speculated that Michael Teplitsky was also behind the trust.

Mr Teplitsky would no doubt welcome staying out of the limelight. In 2017, his Double Bay office was raided by the federal police in relation to an alleged tax fraud of more than $150 million. Teplitsky was ultimately not charged in relation to the allegations but ended up in handcuffs during the raid after he lunged at a Herald photographer and his partner Olivia Korner pulled the hair of a Herald reporter.

Mr Teplitsky didn’t respond to calls for this story, and Mr Heaton dismissed suggestions Teplitsky owned the property, saying “he has got nothing to do with it”.

Westfield’s sprawl

Billionaire Westfield heiress Monica Saunders-Weinberg has taken a leaf out of her sister Betty Klimenko’s book on real estate investment by buying yet another of the houses next door to her Bellevue Hill home.

The billionaire daughter of the late Westfield co-founder John Saunders bought her Bellevue Hill mansion in 2010 for $20 million, added next door in 2016 for $6 million to make way for a tennis court, and more recently a $5.9 million neighbouring house that was bought by a trust that has been lodged in her name.

The almost $32 million in real estate amounts to a 3400-square-metre parcel. That’s only marginally smaller than the 3500-square-metre holding that Klimenko has amassed in Vaucluse at a cost of almost $23.5 million for five houses.

The sister ranked 29^th on last year’s Financial Review Rich List 200, worth an estimated $2.7 billion.

Pittwater getaway

Still, with the heiresses of Sydney’s eastern suburbs, Marnie Lewis-Millar, daughter of the late property tycoon Bernard Lewis, has bought a Pittwater getaway for $5 million.

The charming cottage with deepwater jetty and pontoon is on the north-facing side of Scotland Island, picked up in a company name of which co-director is her husband, Bruce Millar.

The Vaucluse-based Lewis-Millar sold her penthouse in the Quay Grande at Circular Quay last October for $12.6 million to stockbroker Angus Aitken.

Radio funnyman’s sea change

Radio funnyman Merrick Watts and his wife Georgina have swapped Sydney’s inner west for Maroubra, buying a former century-old church on the beach for $3.75 million.

At least one local is hoping the couple plan to apply their renovation know-how to their new six-bedroom house given their performance on their Lilyfield converted warehouse.

The couple commissioned an award-winning redesign by acclaimed architect Virginia Kerridge of what was once the Oh Boy Candy company factory in Lilyfield after they bought it in 2009 for $2.1 million, the result of which set a suburb record last year of $6.2 million when renovation queen Cherie Barber bought it.

Watts, who made his name as a radio host with Hunters Hill-based modernist home lover Tim Ross on Nova 20 years ago, was a finalist last year on Seven’s SAS Australia with rugby player Nick “Honey Badger” Cummins and AFL player Sabrina Frederick.

The Watts clan’s new home last traded in 2014 for $2.3 million, when the Molyneux family bought it under the hammer for more than $300,000 above the reserve.

Gold dealers strike real estate

Kurt and Nathalie Jaggard are known professionally as gold bullion dealers, but it is their Manly real estate that has made them a fortune in recent years.

Last June, as the pandemic was prompting economic forecasts of double-digit price drops in property, the Jaggards bought a three-bedroom apartment on Manly’s Fairy Bower for $6.01 million after 238 days on the market.

At the time it was a downsize from their nearby Federation house, Brise de Mer on North Steyne, bought for $7.55 million in 2018 and off-loaded last September for $10 million to Geoff Kinghorn, son of Rams Home Loans founder John Kinghorn.

But a few months after settling on their oceanfront reserve home the Jaggards listed it in March with Michael Clarke, of Clarke & Humel, who had sold it to them. A heated auction followed last week at which the result was pushed well above the reserve to sell for $7.2 million.

Bellevue Hill to Tamarama, and back

Goldman Sachs Australia’s managing director Chris Champion and his wife Diana Fassos have bought the Bellevue Hill home of businessman John Mellick and his wife Gemile for $9 million.

The Victoria Road house marks a return to property ownership for the Champions since they sold their designer Tamarama home three years ago for $12.5 million to cookbook author Judy Phillips and her property developer husband Robert Phillips.

Incidentally, the Phillips family were previously Bellevue Hill locals, until they sold their mansion for $13.6 million to IAG senior executive Christine Stasi.

The Champion-Fassos family’s new home on Bellevue Hill’s Victoria Road, known as Killoran, last traded in 1999 when purchased by the Mellicks for $3,295,000.