Jennifer Hawkins and Jake Wall the $6.95 million rumoured buyers of Dame Joan Sutherland's Whale Beach estate
The Sydney glamour couple Jennifer Hawkins and Jake Wall are the rumoured buyers of the prized oceanfront Rocca Bella estate at Whale Beach.
The oceanfront estate involves a huge renovation project ahead if it is the couple who recently secured the bullish $24.5 million sale of their home on Pittwater.
Rocca Bella was listed after its Point Piper-based owner Lorraine Tarabay decided not to proceed with ambitious new weekender plans.
It was offloaded for $6.95 million last month.
It previously sold in 2015 for $6.9 million, five years after the death of the soprano Dame Joan Sutherland.
On the peninsula’s largest oceanfront estate of 3300 square metres, the three-storey house remains in a 1950s time warp.
It had traded in 1977 for $167,000, but was seldom used by Sutherland and her widower conductor Richard Bonynge, who called Montreux, Switzerland, home along with a bolt hole in Potts Point.
It was 1990 when the opera world’s La Stupenda took her last standing ovation after an operatic career spanning almost five decades.
There are approved Campbell Architecture plans available for the next buyer.
The works cost for the four-pavilion home were estimated by architect Hugh Campbell to total $3.6 million, and would include gardens designed by Hugh Main at Spirit Level Landscapes. Also reinstated would be the overgrown tennis court.
Rocca Bella was listed back in late 2018 with $8 million hopes then returned to the market with revised $7.5 million hopes last February through LJ Hooker Palm Beach’s David Edwards.
The billionaire Atlasssian co-founder Michael Cannon-Brookes and wife, Annie were the mystery buyers of Casa Paloma, the Newport waterfront home of Jennifer Hawkins and Jake Wall.
It sold in late June the last days of what was the quietest of financial years for prestige sales having been listed with $20 million hopes.
It sold for $24.5 million, a new record for the northern beaches after a spike of buyer interest through Christie's International selling agent Ken Jacobs.
The prior highest sale was when the late Sam Chisholm’s Palm Beach home was sold to Caledonia fund manager Mike Messara for $24 million in February.
It took the glamorous couple eight months to secure their buyer of Casa Paloma, which many inspectees suggested was the best built home on the pricey peninsula.
The four-level residence, designed by Koichi Takada on its 3360 square metre holding, sold just two days before June 30, and just short of three years after they moved in.