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Rugby Australia chairman Hamish McLennan and his wife Lucinda have joined the ranks of Sydney’s trophy home owners, paying more than $30 million for a house in Darling Point.
Title records show the couple’s interest has been lodged on the title of the non-waterfront house sold by Olympic gold medallist-turned-recruitment boss Mark Kerry and his interior designer wife Lynda. The purchase price won’t be revealed until the deal is settled later this year.
Interior designer Lynda Kerry and architect Andrew Barnyak recently completed a three-year redesign of the Darling Point house.Credit: Domain
It was listed in March with a $35 million guide.
The same house last traded in 2020 for $11 million, but was subject to a major renovation in recent years.
Rugby Australia chairman Hamish McLennan looks to be swapping Lavender Bay for Darling Point.Credit: Peter Rae
Alison Coopes, of her eponymous agency, said at the time she listed the property that the rebuild took three years and was undertaken by Lynda Kerry and architect Andrew Barnyak at a cost of some $7 million.
Coopes declined to comment, citing gag orders on the deal, leaving it to local sources to say the result is close to the $31.8 million that was paid for the house next door in 2017.
The Kerrys are well known for their lucrative home flips. Their former home a few doors away was purchased for $8.5 million in 2015 and sold five years later for $18 million, and a house on the Rose Bay beachfront they bought in 2012 for $5.2 million sold four years later for $13.8 million.
Aiding the Kerrys’ capital gain is Sydney’s soaring property values, as McLennan would know better than most, given his other gig as chairman of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp’s majority-owned REA Group.
The purchase comes as Sydney clocks up one of the best performing quarters for sales in the rarefied $20 million-plus range. Of the 30 trophy home sales this year, 22 were transacted since the start of April.
The Darling Point residence was listed in March with a guide of $35 million on behalf of Mark and Lynda Kerry.Credit: Domain
The McLennans are coming from Lavender Bay where in 2016 they purchased the grand 1880s mansion Alta Mura for $7.4 million from venture capitalist Daniel Petre.
At the time the McLennans purchased the Petre home they were trading out of Mosman’s Beauty Point. It wasn’t the most lucrative property investment: purchased at the height of the 2008 high-end property boom for $6.9 million they sold it for just as much in 2016.
McLennan was yet to respond to inquiries at the time of publication.
Among the top quarterly sales is the $70 million sale of Bellevue Hill’s Leura estate, a Point Piper waterfront house for about $69 million, the $61.5 million sale of flower wholesaler Leo Lynch’s Bellevue Hill home, and Sydney FC owner Scott Barlow’s $60 million sale of his Point Piper home Akuna.
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