Geoffrey Edelsten's Exhibition Street highlife ends with NAB mortgagee sales

The former Melbourne penthouse apartment abodes of Geoffrey Edelsten on Exhibition Street, were sold by National Australia Bank, Mr Edelsten's mortgagee at weekend auction.

The three bedroom penthouse at 1803/181 Exhibition Street sold for $1,607,000.

The one-bedroom pad 1804/181 Exhibition was passed in for $1,301,000 but sold later by negotiation through selling agent Don Gallichio of Galldon Real Estate.

Byrnne Gordon has caveats placed on the penthouses, after the break-down of their high-profile, four-year marriage in 2009.

They each cost $1.375 million in 2006 and 2007.

Edelsten made his first fortune in 1984 when he opened a pioneering 24-hour medical clinic in Sydney.

Title Tattle has been writing about his properties since 1986 when Formentor, in then semi-rural Dural, went to auction with $1.5 million hopes.

Formentor, a breathtaking Spanish villa built by retired stockbroker Michael McAlister, was once owned by the Bill and Imelda Roche, who financed Geoffrey Edelsten into his $960,000 purchase of the Old Northern Road property in 1980 with a $885,000 mortgage. Edelsten later sold it to John Barcham for $1.25 million in early 1987.

By mid-1987 his Broadway clinic's grand piano and brass plate out front had gone.

But Geoffrey Edelsten and his then wife Leanne had by then found the security and seclusion of a leased penthouse at the Quay, Circular Quay complex.

The circus changes town, but the performances are pretty consistent.