Title Deeds: Kate Waterhouse, Luke Ricketson buy $17.8m Balmoral Beach-fronting spread
Socialite Kate Waterhouse and her former rugby league player husband Luke Ricketson have emerged as the buyers behind one of Mosman’s highest sales this year, splashing $17.8 million for a house fronting Balmoral Beach.
It was an off-market purchase by the couple from rag trader Ling Zijian, more than three times the $5.3 million it last traded for in 2003 when sold by then internet entrepreneur Wayne Passlow.
Passlow sold at a loss a year after his Open Telecommunications software company went into voluntary administration in the wake of the dotcom bust, having paid $5.9 million for it in 2000 from the late yachtie Warren Johns and his widow Joan.
Ling, 61, is the head of fast fashion label Ladakh, a Surry Hills distributor of women’s, children’s and infant clothing founded in 1997.
The daughter of legendary horse trainer Gai Waterhouse and bookmaker Robbie Waterhouse is already a Balmoral local, living in a three-bedder pad on The Esplanade, purchased for $4.2 million in 2005.
The Waterhouse clan own several properties at Balmoral, including an apartment next to the newly purchased $17.8 million digs and a beachfront house bought by Kate’s brother, online tipster Tom Waterhouse for $13 million in 2014, although mum and dad have called the Southern Highlands home since 2014 when they bought the property Dunsinea for $4.94 million.
Waterhouse and Ricketson’s purchase comes a year after the patriarch of the bookmaking dynasty Bill Waterhouse died, aged 97.
Where to next for Knappick?
Coal tycoon David Knappick and his wife Ann are selling their home in the Byron Bay hinterland with price hopes of $15 million to $18 million.
The 25-hectare property is predominantly rainforest but with a designer residence on the promontory built a decade ago using mainly recycled timber beams from Queensland’s Mackay Wharf and with a 20-metre lap pool.
The former chief bean counter at Felix Resources, who made his fortune when the coal operation was sold to Chinese company Yanzhou Coal for $3.5 billion in 2009, has owned the property since 2004 paying $2.3 million at the time.
No word from agent Graham Dunn, of his eponymous agency, as to where the vendors plan to move next, but records show they have a few choices on hand: their $9 million Watermark property at Wategos Beach, a beachfront duplex at Lennox Head they bought two years ago for $6.2 million or the acreage at Ewingsdale bought last year for $3.4 million from Damien Antico, son of the late industrialist Sir Tristan Antico.
PPE pays off
Jack and Christine Li, owners of PPE supplies distributor Medical Plus, have bought the Bayview mansion known as The Bachelor house thanks to its starring role in the 2013 reality romance show when bachelor Tim Robards met now-wife Anna Heinrich.
The opulent mansion known as La Joie de Vivre was owned by Surfers Paradise-based freight tycoon Clive Thomas and his wife Lee, who listed it with Christie’s Darren Curtis with most recent hopes of $9.5 million.
The result remains undisclosed, but it is expected to be less than $9 million. It last traded in 2016 for $7.05 million when sold by retired transport businessman Greg Poche and his wife Kay van Norton, who made a loss on their $10 million price of 2003.
$20m penthouse buy
Venture capitalist Shayne Smyth and his photographer wife Leonie have settled on their newly purchased $20 million penthouse in Sydney Wharf in time for Christmas.
The sale by McGrath’s Robert Alfeldi sets a record for Pyrmont and is almost three times the $6.96 million it last traded for in 2008 when purchased by Michael Maxwell, the former property chief at collapsed global investment advisory Babcock & Brown.
Smyth, co-founder and chairman of Perle Ventures, is expected to retain the couple’s Woolwich home bought on the waterfront almost 20 years ago for $5.55 million.
Anita Jacoby cashes in
As the Avalon community were being given their stay-home orders on Thursday, a sold sticker went up on the boathouse-style waterfront property of media executive Anita Jacoby.
Built in the 1940s over the water with a three-bedroom cottage, it is set on a 936 square metre parcel that last traded in 1998 for $950,000.
McGrath’s James Baker had a $4.5 million guide, but is yet to reveal the sale result.
The renowned TV producer is a long-time Avalon Beach local and has owned a slew of homes on the Pittwater waterfront over the years, including the $5.7 million modernist residence she bought with her husband John Cary five years ago.
Healthfood scion scores in Point Piper
Ella Leis, wife of Stargate Property Group boss Elia Leis, has bought the Point Piper duplex of Ke Gui, son of healthfood tycoon and Nanjing Sinolife founder Gui Pinghu.
Sources say $12.95 million was the sale price through BlackDiamondz’s Monika Tu, ending a protracted campaign that goes back to 2016 when it first hit the market for $11.5 million.
Gui purchased the lavishly appointed villa and penthouse in 2014 for $10.2 million from dentist Neil Tanudisastro and his wife Yani Sutaniman through Ms Tu.
Sources say the Leis family has already done an off-market deal on their Parsley Bay home in Vaucluse doubling their $4.05 million purchase of 2008, although records are yet to confirm such a transaction.
The Gui family’s Sydney bolthole is a pad in The Residences overlooking Hyde Park, boughtin 2013 when Gui Snr sold their Belrose acreage for $7.5 million.
Nanjing Sinolife’s Australian subsidiary is Cobayer Health Foods.
Bellevue Hill’s latest flip
Property developer Chris Sanchez and his wife Kate, co-founder of social networking site schoolparents.com.au, sold their Bellevue Hill home under the hammer this week, scoring a little more than $12.1 million.
The result is almost double the $6,375,000 they paid for it two years ago, but comes after a major redesign into what is now a six-bedroom house with a swimming pool on a level 940 square metre block.