Add to cart? PayPal boss lists $10.5m Tamarama property

Managing director of PayPal in Australia and the chair of PayPal Giving Fund, Simon Banks, and his partner, Fiona Munro, are selling their luxurious Tamarama property with a guide of $10.5 million.

The four-bedroom beach house was designed by architect Robert Weir in 2010 and offers unobstructed ocean views across three levels.

Spotted gum floors, travertine bathrooms, stone and glass adorn the interiors, and there is a courtyard and plunge pool to relax and unwind.

Banks, who told The Australian Financial Review’s 15 Minutes with the BOSS podcast in August that he “shops online almost every day” and uses PayPal to pay for Uber, bought the address with Munro for $2,275,000 in 2004.

The property is scheduled to go to auction on October 11 and is being sold through Alexander Phillips and Thomas Fuller of PPD Real Estate.

Hidden mansion for sale in exclusive enclave

Businessman Ron Remen and his wife, Shauna, are offloading their palatial home in Sydney’s eastern suburbs with a guide of $25 million to $27 million.

The couple purchased the Vaucluse home for $9.5 million in 2018 and extensively renovated, modifying the pool and refreshing the interiors. Features include beamed ceilings, skylights and patterned wallpaper, while a home gym overlooks the pool.

Hidden from prying eyes with lush manicured gardens, the seven-bedroom home’s selling point is ladder access that leads directly onto Parsley Bay.

This is not the first time the Remens have bought and sold in Vaucluse. They sold another spacious residence for $26.5 million in 2017 to Alexander Ma, son of Hong Kong media mogul Ching-Kwan Ma, who then offloaded it for a cool $30 million in 2020.

The Remens’ most recent listing is scheduled for auction on October 9 and is listed with Alan Fettes and Elliott Placks of Ray White Double Bay.

It’s showtime, folks!

Landmark mansion Iona has changed hands again, and a well-placed source not authorised to comment publicly pinned Bryant Stokes, the son of billionaire Channel 7 chairman Kerry Stokes, and his wife, Dominique, as the buyers.

The home was once owned by Oscar-winning couple Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin.

Harriet France of Sydney Sotheby’s International Realty, who sold the home for a Darlinghurst suburb record of $37.5 million this week, alongside Clint Ballard and Maclay Longhurst, declined to comment on the buyer’s identity, only to confirm it was a family from the eastern suburbs.

France told this masthead that competition was intense, with four parties and negotiations that went for hours.

Built in circa 1888, the historic Victorian Italianate in the heart of Darlinghurst had a guide of $27 million, a figure $13 million less than when it was first shopped around for $40 million last spring.

Tim Eustace, of Mercury Private, and Stephen Panui purchased the seven-bedroom, seven-bathroom trophy home from the showbiz couple for $16 million in 2016, in a deal also by France.

Eustace and Panui opened up the property for philanthropic and historical events, hosting the Historic Houses Trust tour and the Australian Chamber Orchestra fundraiser.

North shore locals buy waterfront Mosman mansion

Castlecrag locals Louise Grinham and her fund manager husband, Richard, have emerged as the cash buyers of the Virgona family’s Mosman waterfront, on settlement documents last week.

This column previously reported that the home sold for a suburb record of $43.5 million last month in an off-market deal.

Glenn Curran of The Agency and Guido Scatizzi of BresicWhitney declined to comment on the identity of the buyers, citing a confidentiality agreement.

Apparently there was stiff competition. Three parties with budgets of more than $40 million vied for the keys, and the property sold before the listing went live.

The underbidder was also local, said buyer’s agent Robert Klaric of The Property Expert International, who represented the underbidder.

Klaric said the strength of the Mosman market owed to a scarcity of waterfront homes coming up for sale.

“There’s only a handful of properties selling on the waterfront,” Klaric said earlier. “It’s very rare in Mosman.”

Sydney Slice buyer’s agent Deborah West said earlier that the high end of the market on the lower north shore was shifting “because [buyers] can’t get access in the east because stock in the eastern suburbs are so inflated price-wise”, so more people were looking north of the bridge for better value.

The three-bedroom, three-bathroom house has views of Chinamans Beach and was last purchased for $5.5 million in 2010 under Maria Virgona’s name.

Maria and her husband, Victor, who developed living estates for the over 50s and had a prefabricated homes business, are no strangers to trophy homes.

They took Mosman’s prestige market into the $20 million range in 2005 when they sold their family compound on Burran Avenue for $20.5 million to industrial property billionaire Greg Goodman.

Their latest sale should come as no surprise, nor should their $18 million downsize to a Manly beachfront penthouse they bought from AirTrunk’s Robin Khuda and his wife, Melea.