Prestige Tarana, Potts Point apartment sold at 10% discount

Prestige Tarana, Potts Point apartment sold at 10% discount
Jonathan ChancellorDecember 7, 2020

Fashion maven Rozalia Alpert's Potts Point apartment has sold at auction for $3,625,000.

It was initially listed with $5 million plus hopes in mid-2012 which were revised recently to around $4 million.

The three-level Wylde Street apartment is one of three in Tarana, a circa 1885 Victorian Italianate-style mansion that was converted to strata residences in 2003 by developer Jorge Fernandez.

The 415 square metre apartment has an enormous living area that originally was the Tarana ballroom along with ornate Italianate features including parquet floors, corinthian columns and vaulted ceilings.

Alpert was the founder of Cara & Co, which sold cutting-edge fashion as well as food, music and art.

The apartment was relisted with revised expectations, with hopes that the apartment in the heritage building might match its $4 million 2005 purchase price through McGrath's Peter Starr and Jared Ginsberg.

With three interested parties, the auction had just the one bidder on the somewhat awkwardly shaped apartment and car parking.

Its location too just a little too far out of the neighbourhood to attract competitive bidding.

Title Tattle recalls it was last sold for $4million by Retro Security's Koste Stefanoff. The apartment, with 258sqm of internal space plus a 160sqm garden, is in the triplex developed in the 1880 Victorian-Italianate-style mansion built for Arthur McQuade, whose family also owned the adjacent sandstone mansion, Bomera.

Tarana stands on Wylde Street, high above the sandstone cutting that was opened up to car traffic many decades ago. In 1907, a third storey was added to the residence and the original billiards room was extended into a ballroom.

The 2003 restoration was undertaken by the heritage-sympathetic Jorge Fernandez who secured $10.5million from the three apartment sales - with $2.55million from Stefanoff.

The Potts Point result sat within Sydney’s strengthening winter auction market with the weekend’s clearance rate the highest reported for 10 weeks.

The initial August weekend commenced on a high recording a preliminary clearance rate of 79.1%, bringing the four weekend Saturday night average to 77.9% compared to the previous four weekend result of 74.4%, according to the Domain Group's Australian Property Monitors.

Sydney has now recorded four consecutive weekends with clearance rates above 77 percent for the first time since March.

Auctions numbers in Sydney were down with 416 properties scheduled to go under the hammer – 90 fewer than the 506 that were auctioned the previous weekend.

However auction numbers were ahead the same weekend last year when 331 homes were auctioned.

APM senior economist Dr Andrew Wilson said this continued the trend over recent months with 1757 homes listed for auction over July again well ahead of the 1233 auctioned over July last year.

Sydney’s inner suburban regions led the charge at the weekend recording exceptionally strong results.

The top performer was the lower north shore with a clearance rate of 92.9% followed by the inner west at 89.9%, the city and east with 84.4%, the northern beaches at 84.2%, the south with 82.2% and the upper north shore with a clearance rate of 81.8%.

The most expensive property reported sold at auction at the weekend was the Wylde Street, Potts Point offering.

The most affordable property reported sold at the weekend was a two bedroom unit at 9/12 Drummond Street Warwick Farm that sold for $296,000 through Professionals Canley Heights.

Jonathan Chancellor

Jonathan Chancellor is one of Australia's most respected property journalists, having been at the top of the game since the early 1980s. Jonathan co-founded the property industry website Property Observer and has written for national and international publications.

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