Braelin, the mystery $12 million Centennial Park trophy home sale?

Braelin, the mystery $12 million Centennial Park trophy home sale?
Jonathan ChancellorDecember 7, 2020

The Centennial Park trophy home, Braelin appears to have been sold for a record $12 million by the car dealer Ian Pagent and his wife Marianne.

But the property's brief marketing has been removed from the McGrath website without sale or price indication after its only open for inspection by agent Ben Collier.

Another agent, who sold it last time for $8.3 million in 2009, was left to report the sale after hearing of a disappointed buyer's agent advisory.

It was bought in 2009 shortly after Ian and Marianne Pagent sold their Woollahra residence, a three-terrace compound for $16 million to John Grill, the chief of oil and gas engineering firm Worley Parsons.

Braelin, restored and extended with high regard for its architectural heritage significance, stands on the largest landholding on the prized park-side avenue at 44-46 Lang Road.

The 2010 development application was estimated at around $400,000.

Designed in the inter-war Californian bungalow style by architect Donald Esplin and built in 1918 for Sir Allen Taylor, a former lord mayor of Sydney, the house has seven bedrooms, six bathrooms and grand reception rooms.

The property was previous traded when bought by headhunter Brian Russell in May 2001 for $3,175,000.

Braelin has a self-contained one-bedroom cottage (with an attached double garage) and another separate building in the rear garden housing another double garage and an entertainment pavilion (with kitchen) overlooking a side lawn and swimming pool.

One of Centennial Park's finest residences, it sits on a 2,195 square metre land parcel opposite the park.

The suburb's record stood at $10 million for two Martin Road homes - the Zavattaro family purchase in 2006 of the historic Crossways mansion when it was sold by former McGuigan Wines director James Smiley and in 2008 when the contemporary home of Peter Holmes a Court sold to orthopaedic surgeon Leo Pinczewski.

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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