Youngest son of late Lady (Mary) Fairfax buys $15m renovator in Vaucluse

Almost four years after the death of society queen Lady (Mary) Fairfax, her youngest son, Charles Fairfax, has upgraded his home real estate on one of Vaucluse’s best streets for just shy of $15 million.

The Spanish mission-style house on Coolong Road is expected to get a major renovation, if not a rebuild, for Fairfax and his wife Kate after they take possession later this year.

While the house will be an upgrade from the Dover Heights home they purchased in 2017 for $4.97 million, it remains a far more humble abode compared to the Fairwater estate in Point Piper where he grew up, and which was sold in 2018 for a national house price record of $100 million to tech billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes.

Fairfax’s new digs set a record for the non-waterfront side of the street, opposite a who’s who of Sydney’s high-net-worth circles, such as Westfield scion David Lowy, Marco Belgiorno-Zegna of the Transfield family, banker Ron Malek, expat currency trader Ivan Ritossa and Menulog co-founder Leon Kamenev, who is undertaking an $80 million consolidation of four houses.

There were more than a handful of potential buyers at a private auction vying for the five-bedroom house with an arched colonnaded facade through Sothebys International’s Michael Pallier.

Pallier declined to comment on the proceedings or reveal the buyer, but well-placed sources in the room say four of those buyers took the result from an opening offer of $13 million – at which point it was already on the market – to a final bid of $14.95 million.

Fairfax also bought the historic Victorian house Balquhain in the Blue Mountains last November, paying $4.05 million to fund manager Alwyn Heong, and returning it to Fairfax family ownership after it was sold by his relative John B. Fairfax in 1990.

Musical chairs from Cremorne to Kurraba Point

Former Oroton boss Sally Macdonald and Dr Wayne Markman, head of medical research company SYMBYX Biome, didn’t manage to sell their grand Kurraba Point Federation residence Waiona last year for $6 million given the immediate impact of COVID-19 on the market.

But 2021 is clearly a whole new ball game: despite its withdrawal from sale last year, the house just sold off-market for $6.2 million.

Records show it was bought by actor Jenni Baird and filmmaker Michael Petroni, the latter of whom is best known for directing the mystery thriller movie Backtrack and the Netflix series Messiah.

The Kurraba Point purchase is an upgrade for Baird and Petroni from their Cremorne four-bedroom home that sold recently for $3.5 million to 60 Minutes reporter Tara Brown.

Brown’s purchase comes as her former husband, veteran television producer John McAvoy takes sole possession of their former Castlecrag home.

Still on the Lower North Shore harbourfront, Lendlease chief executive Kylie Rampa and her husband, telco Inabox Group chair David Rampa, cashed in on last weekend’s bull auction market, pocketing $7.04 million for their Cremorne Point home on waterfront reserve.

The Federation house renovated by architect Michael Suttor was purchased in 2003 for $2.5 million from Tricia Stevens, a business associate of Shark Tank’s Andrew Banks, and returned to the market with a $6.25 million reserve recently through Belle Property’s Stefon Bertram.

Bellevue Hill’s pearler

Paspaley executive director Peter Bracher, a third-generation member of the pearling family, has traded up in Bellevue Hill, paying $5.56 million for the home of Federation Asset Management chief Cameron Brownjohn and his former wife, Lucinda.

His and her agents, D’Leanne Lewis of Laing+Simmons Double Bay and Ashley Bierman of Ray White Double Bay, had listed it for $5 million, only marginally more than the $4.89 million it last traded for in 2017.

Bracher, the grandson of Paspaley founder Nicholas Paspalis, sold his former Bellevue Hill home, a duplex on Bundarra Street, last October for $4.75 million to former Afterpay non-executive director and LinkedIn managing director Clifford Rosenberg.

Pymble’s record hopes

The Pymble home of the late corporate adviser Vaz Havanessian is up for sale for $12 million following his death in a tragic car crash during the storms that swept Sydney in March.

Havanessian, the former deputy chairman of mineral exploration company Mandalong Resources and former chair of Strathfield Car Radios group, paid $1.5 million in 1993 for the Georgian-style mansion with dual street frontage, a tennis court and swimming pool on almost 4000 square meters.

His widow Paula has listed it with Chadwick’s Lynette Malcolm and William Zhang amid expectations it will top the suburb high of $9.87 million set in June last year by Danielle Scott, wife of the local head of Partners Group, Martin Scott.

Dural’s young at heart

Teenage trophy-home trader “Rachel” Zhuxin Zhou has bought a Dural estate following the sale of her historic Springfields home in Warrawee on the Upper North Shore last December for $11.5 million.

The now-18-year-old has paid $4.95 million for a French chalet-inspired mansion with nine bedrooms, five bathrooms, six living rooms and a swimming pool on two hectares – plenty of room for her and her mother Wei Lin.

Zhou, the daughter of Chinese businessman Jianming Zhou, purchased the property through Chadwick’s Lynette Malcolm and William Zhang from little-known QiZhi Gan and Yuman Tang, both from China.

Bowral’s Oxley Hill trades hands

Trophy-home owner and commercial developer Robert Berger and his wife Candy have snapped up Bowral’s Oxley Hill for $8.2 million.

The property was once part of a subdivision by cattle baron Theo Onisforou in the 1990s, and sold on the quiet to the Bergers by Jenny Harper, the chief of Southern Highlands Private Hospital, and her husband Ron Wade.

It is expected to be a weekend getaway for the Bergers from their Vaucluse waterfront home, the architect Luigi Rosselli-designed residence they bought for $38.8 million in 2018 from supermarket chain owner Huang Qiarong.

The Bergers upgraded to Vaucluse from Rose Bay, where they sold for $13.2 million last year.