Sydney Harbour million-dollar houseboat yet to sell

Tanderra, one of Sydney’s few remaining houseboats, now comes with confirmed $1 million expectations.

It's one of the 32 houseboats that moored in Middle Harbour near The Spit at Pearl Bay before, and then through the 1930s Depression.

Now there are just four.

A Mosman heritage study said the houseboats were "rare examples of a now unconventional form of living still in use".

The 2012 auction campaign – which evoked Sleepless in Seattle and Chocolat houseboat portrayals – and for those with longer memories Sophia Loren and Cary Grant's romantic 1959 movie Houseboat - was interrupted after technical issues with the Roads and Maritime Services lease.

It has 38 years left in its 40 year lease.

The three-level houseboat is classified as a permanent residential structure with long-standing existing use rights.

Its use rights give the new owner the ability to resubmit architect-designed plans or submit their own plans to finish Tanderra’s 310-square metre redevelopment into a luxury residential dwelling.

Property Observer reported on the earlier listing in July. And a vendor bid of $700,000 was made at its December auction.

There was controversy last year, when the Mosman deputy mayor Simon Menzies suggested it should be "towed out to sea and sunk" given its was a visual eyesore.

“It is visual pollution in one of Sydney’s most picturesque bays,” he said.

Its vendor Maureen Young, now wanting to spend more time with her family in England, paid about $150,000 in 1983 to its then owner, adman John Singleton and then she rebuilt the 65-tonne pontoon.

Four years after Singleton sold Tanderra to Young, he bought another Pearl Bay houseboat for about $200,000. Named Spec, Singo's second houseboat had a two-storey residence designed and crafted by yachtsman Ian Kiernan. In 1989, Singleton sold Spec for $560,000 to a group of barristers.

The Tanderra houseboat is being sold by Sandie Dunne from Harcourts Dunne Mosman. The renovation is mooted to cost about $600,000.

{module Houseboat}