Data centre boss and Rich Lister Robin Khuda has taken one of the Mornington Peninsula’s long-established families to court in an attempt to void his $9.29 million purchase of two lots at the height of the lockdown-fuelled holiday home market.
Mr Khuda, who bought lots 111 and 112 Wildcoast Road on part of the former Tintagel Farm in June 2021, says the vendors failed to inform him of the effect earthworks had on the combined one-hectare site and went to the Supreme Court of Victoria last month to rescind the contract of sale.
The Tintagel Farm site originally came to market in 2016 with hopes for a $25m price, but failed to sell.
The fight pitting Asia Digital Investments, a company controlled by Mr Khuda and wife Melea Walker-Khuda, against Mara Dextra, an entity of Caron Wilson-Hawley and brother Warwick Ross, arose after construction of a road to divide the eight blocks that sold for a collective $46 million at auction.
Mr Khuda paid $4.44 million for lot 111, which had an indicative price of $2.5 million and $4.85 million for lot 112, which had a guide of $3 million.
The case revolves around when the vendors knew that the civil earthworks – carried out after the auction – had altered the natural surface level of the two lots Mr Khuda acquired and how quickly they informed the buyer.
Court documents show Mr Khuda accuses the vendor of failing to meet disclosure requirements of Victoria’s Sale of Land Act.
The one-day hearing concluded last month before Associate Judge Mary-Jane Ierodiaconou and awaits judgment.
The site was later subdivided into eight lots. Mr Khuda’s company acquired lots 111 and 112 at an auction in June 2021 at which all eight lots sold for a collective $46m. The dispute arose over earthworks subsequently done to extend Wildcoast Road into the site and separate the blocks.
The argument, limited to the sale of off-the-plan contracts, tests the interpretation of vendor disclosure around changes in the surface level of a site and could set a precedent – if accepted – that increases the risk for vendors of having a sale terminated if they don’t fulfil those obligations.
That could raise the stakes in a falling market. Sales data for the thinly traded Portsea land market were not available, but Pricefinder figures show the median sale price in the playground of the wealthy has slipped from $3.675 million in 2021 to $3.5 million.
Mr Khuda did not reply to a request for comment. His solicitor, Gadens partner Andrew Kennedy, declined to comment. The vendors’ solicitor Nigel Evans did not respond to a request for comment and sales agent Hamish Opray of Peninsula Sotheby’s International Realty, who managed the sale, also declined to comment.
The civil earthworks, which started in October last year to extend Wildcoast Road into the undulating block previously known as “5B”, and which the vendors’ family acquired from Melbourne’s wealthy Baillieu family in 1963, created a berm, or mound of earth, between 1 and 2 metres high running along the southern, water-facing boundary of the two lots after Mr Khuda bought them.
The height of the berm – part of the required civil engineering of the new road – on the highest edge of the uphill-sloping blocks would be likely to affect any design drawn up for a holiday home Mr Khuda and his wife may have wanted to build on the site.
The court documents show Mr Khuda, whose estimated $1.1 billion wealth derives from the 2020 sale of a majority stake in AirTrunk, the data centre provider he founded, sought to rescind the purchase agreement at the end of January.
No stranger to property investment, Sydney-based Mr Khuda in 2021 also spent up to $35 million to acquire retail street-front property in St Kilda’s Fitzroy and Acland Streets, as part of a portfolio stretching from Sydney’s lower north shore to Lennox Head in Byron Bay and estimated to be worth about $150 million.
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