Inner west smashes suburb records with double-digit million sales

Former NSW Harness Racing Authority chief steward Roger Nebauer and Julie Nebauer had purchased it for $70,000 in 1975. It was bought by the head of private Chinese-Australian property development company Megland Group, Xia Meng and her partner Weixi Xie.

And while we’re at it, there’s a new Rozelle high of $7.8 million, set by an apartment, no less. The penthouse in the waterfront Balmain Cove development was purchased by Hunters Hill trophy home owners Toni and Lyall McLachlan, the latter of whom is the chairman of Graphite Energy.

Suffolk Garden

Musician Daniel Jones, of 1990s pop duo sensation Savage Garden, has listed his Suffolk Park house for sale for $2.9 million with Kim Jones, of her eponymous agency.

The listing follows his purchase last year with his wife, former Hi-5 performer Kathleen de Leon Jones of a $5 million property in the Tuckombil hinterland known as The Coppice.

Jones’s Suffolk Beach house, a block back from Tallow Beach, has been renovated throughout since he bought it in 2020 for $1.6 million.

Bondi’s biggest landlord

Billionaire fund manager Will Vicars has ploughed more of his mountains of cash into the Bondi Beach property market, this time picking up a block of 21 apartments for $23.5 million.

The block of predominantly one-bedders was sold by fellow prominent eastern suburb’s identity Michael Teplitsky, who last year sold a block of four apartments on the Darling Point waterfront for $55 million to interests of developer John Roth.

Vicars, who runs hedge fund Caledonia Investments, is ordinarily based in Point Piper, but has a deep-pocketed affection for Bondi Beach judging by the $100 million worth of residential property he owns nearby. Count them: there are $40 million worth of apartments in the Bondi Pacific, an $11.3 million block of apartments in North Bondi, a Bondi block bought for $11.6 million and a Tamarama investment for $10.85 million. Rental anyone?

Grand-er designs

Teal MP Allegra Spender has lodged plans for $750,000 worth of “alterations and additions” to the family’s long-held Woollahra home, now hers as part of the estate settlement with her siblings Bianca Spender and Alex Schuman following the death of their mother, fashion doyenne Carla Zampatti in 2021.

The Mediterranean-style residence was built in 1934 by architect F. Glynn Gilling, purchased by Zampatti in 1975 for $220,000, and to this day retains plenty of its ornate features like its grand circular staircase, arched doorways, a pitched roof with Marseilles pattern tiles, double-hung windows and wrought iron details.

This week’s lodged plans by architect Dino Raccanello target the home’s “service areas”, such as an enlarged kitchen area, a demolished sunroom to make way for a two-storey addition and a semi-circular balcony off the fourth bedroom.

In Vaucluse, work looks to be under way on a dramatic $4 million “modification” of the heritage-listed mansion Werribee in Vaucluse that was sold late last year by China’s food tycoon Sun Shaofeng for $31.2 million to millennial Wenbin Xu.

Xu has already been busy clearing all the trees on site ahead of the anticipated work to the 1914-built residence.

Down the hill there seems to be no hurry to build the 16-room mansion of Great Wall International director King Fai Chu and Xiaoyi Zhu, despite the somewhat rushed demolition two years ago of what was previously a 1920s Gilling-designed residence.

The house had been temporarily protected by an interim heritage order but within days of that being lifted two years ago the bulldozers moved in, and it has remained a flattened site since.