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Star stock picker David Paradice showed form when he bought his oceanfront penthouse on the North Bondi headland back in 2007. What was regarded as a bullish buy for $7.5 million has long since soared in value, thanks in large part to the efforts of our local billionaire class.
The founder of Paradice Investment Management has doubled down on his holding in what is arguably the best-positioned oceanfront block on Ben Buckler’s flat rock, paying $11.325 million for the apartment below after it was listed by Raine & Horne’s Ric Serrao.
The North Bondi sub-penthouse at the end of Ben Buckler sold to the penthouse owner David Paradice.Credit: Domain
The purchase effectively gives Paradice the top two floors, leaving the rest of the block to property developer and film producer Rebel Penfold-Russell, who had renovated the block almost 20 years ago alongside her then co-owner, celebrity builder Barry Du Bois.
The rich-list set have descended on Ben Buckler in ever greater numbers in the 17 years since Paradice bought the penthouse as his Sydney base.
In 2008, prominent investor and Caledonia Private chairman Michael Darling and his food and travel writer wife Manuela Darling-Gansser bought a block of 10 apartments down the road for $14 million to create a private family compound known as Deepwater House.
David Paradice founded Paradice Investment Management in 1999. It has about $14.5 billion under management.Credit: Janie Barrett
In more recent years billionaires like Caledonia’s Will Vicars, Afterpay’s Nick Molnar and Westfield heiress Monica Saunders-Weinberg have followed, bringing with them their penchant for neighbourly acquisitions and a need for ever more garage space.
Paradice knows too well the price of a garage in North Bondi. He recently sold a studio with ocean views, also on Ramsgate Avenue, for $775,000, even while he reportedly refused an offer of $1 million for a garage in the same block.
The Ramsgate Avenue block shared by David Paradice and Rebel Penfold-Russell is the last oceanfront block on flat rock at Ben Buckler.Credit: Domain
Instead, records show Paradice sold the garage for $3.75 million with the two-bedroom apartment attached on title thrown in for the price.
David Haslingden is managing director of Racat Group, which owns Australian Geographic and production company Northern Pictures.Credit:
And the buyer? Nursing home scion Mark Moran and his wife Evette, who no doubt want more car space to go with the $11.5 million penthouse they bought in the block next door in 2018 from retail industry boss Mark McInnes, and which they are still renovating four years after they started.
As the clouds over Sydney finally dissipated this week, agents rushed photographers to high-end listings on all sides of the harbour to catch them at their sunny best. Chief among them is the Vaucluse home of former Nine chairman David Haslingden and his wife Alexa.
Haslingden was for years based in the US where he was Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Networks president before he resigned in 2012 and took up the job of overseeing Nine (now publisher of this masthead).
At the time of their return to Sydney the Haslingdens – Alexa is the daughter of the late Philip Morris boss Hugh Cullman – already owned their Vaucluse house, having purchased it in 1997 for $2.5 million, and commissioned a rebuild by Balagna Design, headed by Argentinian Diego Balagna.
Sotheby’s Michael Pallier has a $25 million guide.
Haslingden, who heads up media company Racat Group, which runs Australian Geographic and Northern Pictures production company, isn’t moving far. The couple purchased a house on the waterfront across the road in 2019 for $10.5 million and have rebuilt it again commissioning their firm of choice, Balagna Design.
The Mosman home of Babak Moini on Balmoral slopes has been gutted and redesigned throughout ahead of next week’s sales campaign.
Buyers with $17.5 million to spare are also being shown through the Mosman home of Laser Clinics co-founder Babak Moini this weekend ahead of next week’s open inspections.
Babak Moini is swapping Mosman’s Balmoral slopes for his $22 million pad in Crown’s One Barrangaroo tower.Credit: Nic Walker
There’s been a dramatic facelift and views opened up to the harbour from the Balmoral slopes house since Moini purchased it for $6.5 million in 2015, two years before the skincare and Botox company was bought out by private equity giant KKR for $650 million.
The ultra-contemporary residence is listed with Atlas’ Michael Coombs and Novak’s Lisa Novak as Moini decamps for his $22 million pad in Crown’s One Barangaroo tower.
Also up for grabs this week is the Cremorne waterfront home owned by Nicola and Emilio Gonzalez, former long-time head of investment manager Pendal.
The couple set a Cremorne record of $7.9 million when they bought the north-facing house with private jetty and pool in 2005 from UBS senior executive Sharon Mitchell and her husband Robert Bishop.
Gonzalez, who stepped down from Pendal in 2021, is downsizing to spend more time on his passion for music production (he is a graduate of London’s Abbey Road Studio after all) and at their Southern Highlands property Rockfield Park.
The Cremorne waterfront home of Nicola and Emilio Gonzalez set a suburb record in 2005 when it last sold for $7.9 million.Credit: Domain
Ray White’s Geoff Smith has an $18 million guide.
At the other end of the Lower North Shore in Hunters Hill, the statement home owned by telecom entrepreneur Tony Hakim is set to hit the market next week.
McGrath’s Tracey Dixon is yet to set a guide, but buyers should expect to pay about $18 million, which at that level would set a non-waterfront record the suburb.
Hakim, who made his name through his telephony bundling business National Telecoms Group, purchased the 2000-square-metre property with tennis court, home theatre, gymnasium and pool in 2002 for $4.4 million, and undertook a major renovation in 2005 by interior designer Glenda Barnes.
The Hakim family home in Hunters Hill is set on 2000 square metres with north-facing views to the rear over the Lane Cove River.
His brother Mick Hakim is another well-known local. He owned a beachfront house at the end of the peninsula in Woolwich that was quietly sold to Eddie Obeid for $8.5 million in 2010 but never settled after the deal was revealed by the Herald’s Kate McClymont.
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