Bank boss Andrew Low sells Central Coast weekender for a $1.2 million loss

Andrew Low recently returned from his 13-year stint in Asia to be Australian chairman of China’s largest bank, CITIC CLSA, and has already turned his attention to the pressing matter of selling his Central Coast weekender.

Set on a double block on dress circle Oak Road, the Matcham property has all the weekender must-haves – think 17-metre pool, gymnasium, tennis court, home theatre and self-contained games room.

It was first listed because of lack of use in 2013.

As the prestige weekender market has failed to make the same bullish return to form in the post-global financial crisis years, the property was discounted to about $4 million most recently.

The Matcham property was first listed back in 2013.
Photo: Supplied

Most recently listed with Tim Andrews, of LJ Hooker Terrigal, and Mat Steinwede, of McGrath, it ultimately proved a loss for the top banker when it sold for $3.95 million.

Andrew Low has sold his Matcham property for $3.95 million.
Photo: Daniel Munoz

Expect to see more of Low in the Darling Point ‘hood now he’s returned to Australia, and more specifically, a $4.15 million apartment in Harnett Towers.

Pasta baron looks beyond horizon

Fraser Hopkins is selling his apartment at the Horizon, Darlinghurst.
Photo: Supplied

Businessman Fraser Hopkins is in a selling mood of late. Earlier this year he listed his recently completed Palm Beach weekender and this week it’s his high-end spread in the Horizon up for grabs.

The Latina Pasta co-founder and Title Deeds regular bought three apartments in 2009 for $2.96 million and amalgamated them into a 292-square-metre spread in the north-east corner of the iconic Harry Seidler landmark.

• Related: Sonoma bakery founder lists Point Piper home
• Related: Katy Perry lists $18.8m Hollywood Hills estate
• Related: Retail chief Mark McInnes buys back into Toorak

Inside Hopkins’ high-end spread.
Photo: Supplied

As Hopkins scouts a new home, Laing Real Estate’s Anthony Birdsall and BresicWhitney’s Darren Pearce are asking $7.5 million to $8 million.

The Horizon is no stranger to notable residents, the most recent to buy into the building being Christine Logan, widow of Labor stalwart and activist Tom Uren, who has moved from Balmain East where she sold for $3.83 million last October.

Logan’s two-bedder spread – sold by Ray White Double Bay’s Gavin Rubinstein – was previously owned by Daniel Giesser, general manager of private investment fund Lawnpage.

Good gains in Woollahra

Medicos Craig and Fiona Waller pocketed about $9 million on the sale of their Victorian-era home.
Photo: Supplied

Orthopaedic surgeon Professor Craig Waller and his wife Dr Fiona Waller have cashed in on Woollahra’s bullish values, selling their 1867-era Victorian home for about $9 million.

At that level, the sale is a decent gain on the $7.45 million they paid for it less than two years ago when it was sold by corporate adviser Geoff Hilton.

The sale is a decent gain on the $7.45 million they paid for it less than two years ago.
Photo: Supplied

Ben Collier, of The Agency, wouldn’t confirm the rumoured sale figure, and in the absence of any disclosures from him it will be left to settlement to reveal the buyer. 

The Wallers are no strangers to a good deal, having sold their Bellevue Hill renovator’s delight for $6.95 million in 2015 to Ariane and David Fuchs, chief investment officer for the Lowy family’s private wealth outfit LFG.

Short shift for Mosman move

There’s now a sold sign outside the Mosman home of Justine Forbes, who has already bought in the same street.
Photo: Supplied

The eldest daughter of billionaire Bob Ell, Justine Forbes, won’t need a removalist truck when she moves out of her recently sold Mosman home. After all, the Clifton Gardens local will only be shifting two doors away to the $8.1 million Federation residence, Athol, she recently bought from the McKelvey family through Ray White Lower North Shore’s Geoff Smith.

It’s never advised to buy before you sell, but Forbes has now scored a sold sign on her former home on Thompson Street anyway.

Forbes first bought into the street in 2004, paying $3.75 million to the Ramsey family and lavishing a decent renovation and plenty of white paint on the five-bedroom house since.

Geoff Smith and his Ray White colleague Richard Harding had listed it with a $7.2 million guide before it sold and it was left to local sources to tip a result close to that mark.

Sale three years in the making

Sassi Cordony is selling her Robertson property Ben Bhraigie.
 Photo: Supplied

It took three years but finally the historic Sutton Forest property “Highfield” has sold. It wasn’t the $8 million hoped for in 2014, but the $4.2 million certainly beat the $190,000 that service station businessman Louis Saad and his wife Rhonda paid for it in 1980.

Word from the Southern Highlands is the 1901-built residence was bought by former gold-medallist track and field athlete and Catalyst chairman Gordon Windeyer and his wife Christine, co-founder and chief of fund manager Spectrum Asset Management.

Replacing Highfield on the shelf is the Robertson property Ben Bhraigie, owned by Sassi Cordony, daughter of the late Italian-born hair salon pioneer Louis Cordony.

The modernist residence on a hillside with panoramic views last traded in 2005 for $3.2 million when sold by Denali Investments’ Richard Cawsey, the former Morgan Stanley managing director.

This time around it’s up for $3.5 million through John Renouf, of Drew Lindsay Real Estate.