Sir William Tyree lists $40 million mansion in Darling Point: Title Tattle
One of Sydney Harbour’s longest property owners, Sir William Tyree, the founder of a 1940s electrical transformer manufacturing company, has listed his $40 million plus Darling Point harbourfront residence. Sir William - who briefly dabbled in fm radio licences in the late 1970s - gave his address as Darling Point when he was knighted in 1971 for philanthropic services. In the early 1990s Sir William successfully resisted attempts by Woollahra Council to turn his foreshore land, which has unrivalled boating facilities, into a harbourfront open space linking to nearby McKell Park. Sir William has engaged three agents Bill Bridges of Ballard Property, Ken Jacobs of Christies International and Michael Dunn from Richardson & Wrench to find its buyer.
The imminent marketing follows his recent $7 million apartment purchase in the Rose Bay harbourfront Wintergarden complex through Richardson & Wrench Double Bay agents Michael Dunn and Jane Ashton. The Wintergarden purchase is the apartment designed in the late 1980s for its developer Sid Londish with the size and scale of a house.
Seek co-founder Matthew Rockman has listed his four-bedroom TOORAK home (pictured above and below) with $3 million hopes through Kay & Burton’s Gerald Delany and Nicole Gleeson. The contemporary house was designed by SJB Architects. It comes with formal sitting room, vast open-plan living and dining zone, adjoining alfresco deck and pool area. It has four bedrooms plus study. The house has four-car accommodation. The Rockmans are building nearby, hence the listing.
Rockman co-founded Seek with brothers Andrew and Paul Bassat in 1997 and managed to survive the tech wreck of 2001, with a 2003 decision by Kerry Packer's PBL to buy a 25% stake in the firm increasing the collective’s net wealth by $40 million.
The Millers Point, Sydney apartment (pictured above) of cattlewoman and heiress to the UBD directory fortune Leonie Lawson was withdrawn from its mid-week auction through Ballard Property agents Clint Ballard and Bill Bridges with price hopes of more than $3.5 million. Occupying the entire 10th level of The Georgia, a prestigious building in Kent Street, it has 230 square metres of space with three bedrooms, three bathrooms and formal living and dining areas opening to a terrace with views to the Opera House, Harbour Bridge and Circular Quay.
Standing on the site of the circa 1907 Dumbarton Castle Hotel, which was demolished in late 1996, The Georgia is a 28-storey building designed by acclaimed architect Ercole Palazzetti, built by Multiplex and completed in 1998. Lawson, who owns an extensive rural holding at Oberon, has listed her apartment because she wants to upgrade her city pad.
This week came news as reported by veteran SMH reporter Malcolm Brown that the “glovebox Gregory's”, which has guided Sydneysiders on roads for 75 years, has been published for the last time before being swallowed up by its big brother, the UBD Street Directory. It seems Navman, Google Maps and Whereis.com on iPhones has spelt the end of the print directory, which was started by a Bathurst journalist, Cecil Albert Gregory, in 1934 after he came to Sydney to work and had trouble finding his way about. The directory eventually peaked at sales of 150,000 a year.
Art collectors Dr David Rosenthal and Professor Doreen Rosenthal have a $2.95 million post-auction asking price on their Malvern home (pictured above), which has doubled as their private gallery for more than 40 years. The classic four-bedroom Victorian on Winter Street has period features including ornate ceilings, marble fireplaces, a double-arched hall and a hand-painted stained-glass entrance. At the back of the corner block is a north-facing garden, a heated swimming pool and a workshop-studio. It was 45 years ago when the Rosenthals moved into the property that had been a family-run boarding house. Its Marshall White agent, Dean Gilbert, had been quoting $2.4 million-plus pre-auction.
Channel Seven Sydney sports presenter Tony Squires and his wife, Kate Pascoe, are selling their house at Clovelly (pictured above). The large three-bedroom Federation semi has open-plan living and dining areas overlooking the ocean. More than $1.7 million is expected for the Surfside Avenue property set for August 27 auction through Debbie Donnelley at goodyerDonnelley Real Estate. Squires and Pascoe are upgrading to a larger $2.6 million house as they want more space for their young son. It was the three-level residence at Bondi Junction sold by the art gallery owner Richard Martin through Ben Collier at McGrath Eastern Suburbs.
Title Tattle aims to tell you as soon as we know – often before it happens –so the word is that Byron Rose will be stepping down as president of the Real Estate Buyer’s Agents Association of Australia after two years in the job. Warwick Brookes is tipped as its next president. Brookes is from the Melbourne-based Domain Property Advocates and a licensed agent with more than 12 years’ experience in real estate. He joined the REBAA Executive in 2009 when he was elected vice-president. There are about 75 to 100 firms around Australia acting exclusively as buyer’s agents, nearly half of those are in New South Wales, compared with just two 10 years ago.
Rose has been around the Sydney scene since 1990 and as a buyers’ agent at Rose & Jones since 1998, and his most high-profile representation was at The Block auction in 2003 at Bondi when he represented the Fairfax Media Group’s purchase of the top-floor French provincial-style property of Phil Rankine and Amity Dry for $655,000 for a Sun Herald marketing promotion.
And don’t say that Title Tattle told you, but it was the Paul and Sandra Salteri who bought the Quay apartment overlooking Circular Quay in Sydney from racing enthusiast Geoff White and his wife, Beryl. They paid $9.85 million for the whole-floor, 414-square-metre apartment, which had been the Whites’ Sydney home since 1991, when they paid a record $3.75 million in the 29-storey Concrete Constructions-built 1984 residential block.
With an estimated $975 million net worth, Paul Salteri chairs Tenix, an industrial services company. The bulk of the philanthropic family's wealth comes from the sale of its defense businesses in 2008 to BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin. The family patriarch, Carlo Salteri, an Italian immigrant who cofounded the business in 1956, died aged 90 in October 2010.
The sale was through City Living agent Bruce Fallshaw, who was under instructions not to reveal its final sale price. The initial hopes were $20 million last year, which were revised down to $11.5 million in March this year. The sale price of the 27th-floor four-bedroom, six-balcony apartment reflected $23,800 per square metres. The unit had been purpose-built by the developer in 1985 with two separate entrances off its own lobby.