Fresh Thredbo price record after sale of Tussock ski chalet on Crackenback

There's a Thredbo price record after its current holder, Tussock, has been snappily sold, having been listed with $4 million to $5 million price hopes.

Tussock, the alpine chalet located on one of the highest blocks in Thredbo, was designed to be a soft edge between the village and the national park.

It last traded for $3.5 million in 2005 when sold by Melbourne architect Andrew Norbury and his then wife Jane Parker, one of the founders of Country Road. It has been purchased by another Sydney family.

Norbury had designed the home on Crackenback Ridge, with its construction costs put as $1.2 million.

The two-storey, five bedroom residence features remote-controlled 15 zone underfloor heating, plus floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on snow gums and passing skiers.

Crackenback Ridge changed mountaintop living with its ski-in, ski-out location.

The ground floor of the home is essentially subterranean with only one of the four elevations revealing itself to the viewer.

Six hundred cubic metres of earth were carved out to slot the home into the hill.  

The upper level is a pavilion structure that sits in a field of Tussock's native grasses and flowers.

The pavilion structure is substantially glazed, creating living areas with a sense of lightness and allowing filtered views of the surrounding alpine environment.

The entry is lit via flashing at the upper level, producing a diffused light that filters through an open staircase and into the subterranean entry foyer. This creates an unexpectedly light and warm entry which then leads up into the pavilion spaces.

Reducing conventional height and visible bulk, the main sleeping quarters were buried into the site with a lightweight living pavilion stepped back into the slope above it.

A wide V-shaped wall of local granite forms the camouflaged outer edge to the subterranean portion. 

"The idea was the bulk of the bedrooms would be warm and cozy downstairs, in a space where you don't need much light, and the spaces above, which you inhabit by day, would be all glass," Norbury of METIER3 noted after its construction.

"The knock-on effect is that the living spaces have a great view out across the ski runs.

"This house is actually very inconspicuous given how big it is [450 square metres]."

By pushing one level underground, the architect halved the permitted site coverage, allowing more space between buildings.

The initiative also broke with the comparatively uniform typology of houses in the village, a conscious goal of the architect.

"You just see a single pavilion," said Norbury. 

Before this design, Norbury had another residence on Crackenback Ridge a little further down the hill which won a commendation in the premier national architecture prize for housing, the Robin Boyd Award, in 1997. 

They sold the home when it became "built out" by other lodges.

Over recent years the most significant sale was De Dacha lodge, set in the village, which fetched $2.25 million.

Overlooking the duck ponds, the four-bedroom European alpine-style lodge ranks among the loveliest of the village’s private abodes.

Former society model Fiona Campbell sold the chalet, which has been an $8000-a-week peak season rental, to the ski-loving Punch family through local agent Doug Edwards at Mountain High Real Estate.

Lendlease resort manager Albert Van der Lee had built it for a mere $28,000 and lived there from 1962 to 1984.

It traded in 1994 for a record $810,000 when Campbell and her then husband, publisher Matt Handbury, bought it from village developers Lendlease. 

Around $240,000 will get you a studio apartment in Central Thredbo. 

Being in Kosciuszco National Park, buyers secure a Torrens Title Leasehold, with leases running until 2057/58.

Owners buy the right to occupy a certain number of beds within a building.

Even out of season, Thredbo is buzzing with crowds clad in sports-luxe, trekking and pedalling up summits.

In summer "it's like having a farmhouse", Norbury said of Tussock.