Art dealer Richard Nagy leads run of top Bondi Beach sales amid lockdown

Bondi Beach hasn’t lost its allure despite two weeks into the Sydney-wide lockdown, with a slew of high-end sales by local and international identities.

London-based art dealer Richard Nagy has cashed in on his Bondi Beach pad, pocketing more than $8 million for the level two apartment in an off-market deal.

The three-bedder in the Bondi Pacific was a Sydney base for the renowned expert on masters Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt, purchased new in 2014 for $5.44 million.

Nagy has been based in the UK since the 1980s and has been central to building one of Australia’s largest private art collections owned by Melbourne businessman Lindsay Hogg, who last year announced he plans to gift the $500 million collection to the people of Victoria.

Sources say Nagy’s apartment was on offer by a few agents but ultimately sold by Sotheby’s James McCowan, who is billed in the building with selling the building’s penthouse for fellow art dealer Steve Nasteski in 2017 for $14.75 million to heiress Ginia Rinehart.

Elsewhere, Tony Davis, founding director of applied data analytics firm Quantium and a board member of The Smith Family, has paid $6 million for a three-bedroom apartment in the prized north-east corner of the Bondi Pacific, as a downsize with his wife Sandra from their Rose Bay home.

Also selling up in the Bondi Pacific is Gilly Walton, who has secured about $4.8 million for her two-bedder through Sotheby’s Riki Tawhara.

Walton, the former wife of former Goldman Sachs banker and Australian consul-general in New York Alastair Walton, purchased it in 2016 for $3.9 million from fashion designer Gail Elliott and her husband Joe Coffey when she was downsizing from her Vaucluse waterfront home, sold in 2015 for $36 million.

Still with Bondi Beach’s secret deals of this week, Peter Scutt, founder of online home-care platform Mable, and his partner Nadia Jacob have purchased an apartment on Bondi Beach’s prized Notts Avenue for $8.08 million.

It’s a downsize from the $12 million home in Tamarama they sold late last year.

Notts Avenue was also the scene of the $20.1 million auction record sale three months ago when yachtie James Mayo sold his penthouse to the founder of one of the largest online gambling websites, Joshua Chan.

And there is a new building record for The Bondi building of $8.5 million after construction industry boss Mark Taylor, founder of Taylor Construction Group, purchased the three-bedroom investment pad of CBRE Residential Projects chairman Justin Brown.

Taylor’s purchase tops the $8 million building record set in 2015 by the penthouse when celebrity accountant Anthony Bell sold it to Bank of Queensland chief executive George Frazis.