Hordern family's 1920s Hawaiian hideaway on the market with Palm Beach record-setting hopes
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Kalua, the plantation-style Palm Beach trophy home on Sydney's northern beaches millionaires’ playground, has been listed for sale with record setting $25 million-plus hopes.
It’s best known as having been the prestige Christmas holiday rental for international luminaries including Nicole Kidman, John Cleese and James Murdoch.
The 1920s Ocean Road property has only had the two owners. It was last sold by the Horden retailing family to the more entrepreneurial Joye family, the current vendors, for $330,000.
It’s a five-bedroom, six-bathroom house, three-bedroom guesthouse along with studio cabana, pool and tennis court on its 5,500-square-metre dress circle block overlooking Cabbage Tree Boat Harbour.
It has been listed by Ken Jacobs at Christies International in conjunction with LJ Hooker Palm Beach agent David Edwards.
They have been instructed to sell it offering purchasers the opportunity of taking 60% vendor financing.
"Unquestionably the most significant and coveted landholding in exclusive Palm Beach, Kalua is a beachfront sanctuary of international stature beyond compare," Jacobs says.
"It is secluded amid magnificent sprawling grounds … a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity as one of the eastern seaboard’s most prestigious residential offerings," Edwards adds.
Kalua was one of the first properties in Palm Beach guaranteeing its historical significance. Folklore has it that the Hordern family sent their architect by sea to Oahu, Hawaii, to copy “stick by stick and stone by stone” the impressive Dillingham plantation residence.
It was subsequently named Kalua, meaning “double” in Hawaiian. At the time of construction there were no roads into Palm Beach so all materials, including soil, had to be barged in from Newport.
By coincidence the vendor, businessman Ian Joye now spends much of his time in Hawaii.
Sales of prestige Palm Beach listings have ranged from $4800 per square metre to $13,000 over recent years.
