Daughters of late property magnate list $12m pad

Marnie Lewis-Millar and Shay Lewis-Thorp, daughters of late property magnate Bernard Lewis, have listed their apartment in the prized north-east corner of the harbourside CBD Quay Grand building for $12 million through Sotheby’s James McCowan and Michael Pallier.

Before Lewis died in 2004, he had forged an empire on the Gold Coast by creating waterfront land where it did not exist and built an impressive portfolio of luxury Sydney homes that included the Darling Point trophy Craigend and Point Piper’s Paradis sur Mer.

The three-bedroom spread last traded in 2000 for $3.92 million, and is often touted as a good buy for mining billionaire Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest if he ever wanted to knock a hole in the walls adjoining his Sydney bolthole next door.

Mahalia Barnes and Ben Rodgers reshuffle

Singer Mahalia Barnes and her husband, musician Ben Rodgers, are rearranging their Southern Highlands lifestyle, listing their Berrima home amid plans to buy again locally and potentially even build an upscale recording and production studio.

This is the Berrima property they bought in 2017 for $960,000 when they first made the tree change from Redfern, selling their apartment in the Watertower factory conversion for $1.4 million.

Fuelling the real estate rethink is not only the demands of the couple’s growing daughters, but a COVID-19 future in which artists like themselves are spending less time gigging and more time in the recording studio and, in the case of Rodgers, doing production work.

Ultimately, Barnes says the couple have no plans to leave the area where she says her daughters are firmly entrenched in the local community and given that her dad, rocker Jimmy Barnes, and mum Jane live in nearby Berrima property Riverbend, bought in 2008 for $1.85 million.

They have renovated the more than 2000-square-metre property with a new kitchen, bathrooms, floors and landscaped garden. It returns to the market for about $2.5 million through Corina Nesci, of Drew Lindsay Real Estate.

Robinson’s move from Brisbane to Bondi

Simon Robinson, the former sparky from Queensland’s Sunshine Coast who married mining heiress Ginia Rinehart four years ago, is selling his former bachelor pad.

After all, who can be bothered with a two-bedder in Brisbane when there’s an almost $15 million penthouse at Bondi Beach to call home?

Long before Robinson married the favourite daughter of mining billionaire Gina Rinehart in 2016 and joined the ranks of Sydney’s well-housed, he had already bought his first home in the converted woolstore development Ansonia set across the road from Brisbane River, paying $645,000 in 2010.

It returned to the market last week for $810,000 through Glenn Gracie of Queensland Sotheby’s International: “All offers considered.”

Johnsons snap up Kendall Lodge

Patrick Johnson, of bespoke tailor P Johnson tailors, and his interior designer wife, Tamsin Johnson, have bought Darling Point’s historic Kendall Lodge for more than $10 million.

The sale ends more than 46 years of Hamblin family ownership of the 1920s-built house, which last traded in 1974 for $155,000 when purchased by late, renowned philosopher and computer scientist Charles Hamblin and his wife, Rita.

The exact price remains undisclosed, but is expected to come close to the $10.3 million that high-profile fund manager Charlie Aitken and his wife Ellie pocketed in 2016 for their Mediterranean-style house next door from financier Tim Odillo Maher and his fashionista partner, Victoria Montano.

Kendall Lodge was listed early this year, originally with $12 million hopes that were revised to $10.8 million by Michael Dunn and Andrew Birbeck, of Richardson & Wrench Double Bay.

The Johnsons are moving from Tamarama, where they bought a house four years ago for $3.85 million and, after a Tamsin Johnson Interiors makeover, sold it last month for more than $5.5 million.

Goulburn’s Glenferrie up for $3.5m

Jakarta-based expat Peter Chambers is selling his horse stud Glenferrie Farm near Goulburn for more than $3.5 million.

Chambers, the chairman of Indonesian hospital chain operator Siloam Hospitals and an advisor to US investment firm Farallon Capital, developed the state-of-the-art stud at Roslyn following his purchase of the property in 2009 for $770,000 to create what is billed the best of its kind in the district.

There were plans to build a farm homestead on the property, but then he bought historic Goulburn property Trentham last year for $6.3 million as his Australian farm stay. Sotheby’s Rural director David Medina has the exclusive listing.

Tamarama’s healthy return

Former Ramsay Health Care chief Chris Rex and his wife, Lynette, sold their Tamarama home Pavilion House on Thursday night, securing what sources say is more than the $11.5 million guide.

The bullish result is not surprising given it sold more than a week before the scheduled September 19 auction, but only three years after they bought it for $11.2 million.

The Walter Barda-designed residence was commissioned by sports and entertainment manager Basil Scaffidi and his wife, Catherine, who sold it after a week on the market in 2017 to the Rex family.

The exact sale price remains undisclosed by D’Leanne Lewis, of Laing+Simmons Double Bay, who had listed it with Alexander Phillips, of PPD Real Estate.

Moving on from Hunters Hill

In Hunters Hill, Queen Anne Federation house Heathcote, owned by interior designer Bianca White, wife of former Macquarie Bank senior executive John White, has sold on the quiet for $11.8 million.

Investa chief investment officer Pete Menegazzo and his wife, Tracey, have already taken the keys and on-sold their Linley Point waterfront home for $7.6 million to Eugene Chung and Manuel Konveng Chung, the latter of whom bought disgraced former Labor powerbroker Eddie Obeid’s former Hunters Hill home, Ahlan, in 1999 for $2.9 million.

White, who co-founded private equity fund Next Capital when it was spun-off Macquarie in 2005, bought it in 2009 for $5.3 million from Lyndsay and Gail Edmonds, founders of helicopter company Heliflite.

This story first appeared at Domain.

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