The schools that ate Sydney: no stopping prestige school expansion as they buy up the neighbourhoods

They effectively acknowledged they'd been waiting five decades. And finally Cranbrook School got the adjoining Bellevue Hill property.

Albeit at a considerable cost - $15,501,000 - some $6080 a square metre.

"This unique property is not ready for our immediate use, but is rich in potential and will provide us with the scope and opportunity to enrich the teaching and learning experiences, and improve the school environment for, present and future generations of Cranbrook students," the school council president, Helen Nugent said in an email to parents today.

And despite being long established, they now they face the likelihood of resistance from remaining residents who don't like the expansionary ways despite their own looming potential windfall gains.

Scots College bought two Bellevue Hill properties on Kambala Road over recent years - $4.1 million in 2008 and $4.9 million in 2009 - and has faced a hostile neighbourhood seeking to influence the generally sympathetic Woollahra Council.

The existing local residents action group, Concerned Scots Neighbours Incorporated have quickly deemed the Cranbrook purchase "cause for concern."

“I’ve had members emailing me about it,” member Paul Blanket told The Australian Financial Review this afternoon. They claim a membership of about 150 residents, but presumably not Helen Nugent, whose own Bellevue Hill home is closer to Scots than Cranbrook, where she is the school council president.

Scots has suggested its expansion involved no increase in numbers of students or staff of The Scots College as a result of its acquisitions.

But there's no stopping the schools expanding their holdings across Sydney.

Property Observer is aware of another, almost as intense auction, earlier this month on the upper North Shore when a very bullish $3.7 million was paid in Roseville.

The successful purchasers were Roseville Anglican College for Girls which was established in 1908.

They'd bought another Bancroft Avenue property in 2011 for $3.675 million suggesting they are intent on increasing their land holdings in the street for some future college expansion.

There were intending home buyers represented by Skeen Property Buyer's Robert Skeen who were intending to renovate the old Federation home back into a family home.

The vendors at the McGrath Estate Agents auction were the Shepherd Centre.

Members of the last family to reside in the house were present at the auction and keen for another family to secure its purchase as a residential home.

"Roseville College looked like they would have bought the property at any price," one attendee noted.

Earlier this month the Wenona School purchased the Independent Theatre, at 269 Miller Street, North Sydney, from the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust for $4.97 million.

"This beautiful heritage building, adjacent to our school, has served as a venue for many Wenona drama performances, HSC music recitals, presentations and other functions, throughout its long history," said the Wenona principal Dr Briony Scott.

"Some of our independent school’s first students in 1886 may well have trod parts of the current building which date from the same year, when it was built as a cable tram terminus and depot," she said of the building used as a boxing hall, a vaudeville hall, car service depot and even an ammunition store over the years.

Its not quite like the other recent sales as this sale actually followed an approach by the AETT to Wenona, the AETT chairman, Lloyd Waddy confirmed. Waddy thanked the Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation and previous donors to the Seaborn Broughton and Walford Foundation, and The Friends of the Independent.

The building will provide much-needed presentation and performance spaces for Wenona’s students. Wenona has been an independent, non-denominational day and boarding school since 1886.

In 2009 Sydney Church of England Grammar School (Shore), made the biggest known acquisition spending $35.2 million for the historic Graythwaite estate. It took its portfolio to 86 properties at its 5.65-hectare campus near North Sydney's business district along with nine hectares of playing fields in Northbridge.