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When Tesla chair Robyn Denholm bought an apartment on Cremorne Point this week for $27.5 million, it forced locals and even seasoned agents to take stock.
“It just goes to show the trophy home market is bulletproof,” said Mosman veteran agent Kingsley Yates. “It shows the gap between the mainstream property market and the trophy one is widening.”
Tesla chair Robyn Denholm has set an apartment record north of the Harbour Bridge at $27.5 million.Credit:Domain
Yates isn’t just referring to this week’s bullish sale result and the fact it is the state’s highest apartment sale outside the CBD’s luxury tower market.
It is just the latest of 20 suburbs across the north shore, from Palm Beach to Warrawee and Kirribilli and Epping in the north-west where records have been smashed this year.
But as Denholm was taking the keys to her new seven-bedroom penthouse this week, CoreLogic figures were released to show that in the five months to the end of September Sydney’s median house price fell 9.7 per cent and apartments dropped 5.5 per cent.
That discrepancy just proves that the trophy home market doesn’t move in response to broader market influences like interest rates, said Forbes Global Properties’ Ken Jacobs, who sold Denholm her $27.5 million digs.
“The trophy market responds to supply. So if the right home becomes available, it will set the market,” Jacobs said. “The market doesn’t set the price.”
The six consecutive interest rate rises in as many months by the Reserve Bank of Australia are unlikely to affect high-end values because so many of the top deals across the upper north shore were in cash, DiJones’ Tim Fraser said.
Fraser should know. He set records for Warrawee at $16 million, Wahroonga at $14.5 million and Turramurra at $11.2 million.
The Mosman mansion of Trevor Conway and Marjorie Conway set a north shore high of $33 million when sold in March.Credit:
Prestige agents have uniformly blamed a shortage of high-end homes for sale for the spate of bullish results, but that is only part of the equation, according to Richard Simeon, who set a house and apartment record for Mosman this year of $33 million and $14.1 million respectively.
The other part is the number of buyers, Simeon said. “The media is so focused on broader market falls, but at the top end we’ve never seen so many buyers with this sort of budget,” he said.
“Buyers from the tech sector and pharmaceutical industry, in particular, have made more money during COVID than they have the rest of their lives.”
The northern beaches have claimed seven suburb records, including Palm Beach at $27.5 million thanks to the purchase of Wisetech billionaire Richard White and Freshwater at $14.2 million for the house sold by F45 co-founder Adam Gilchrist last month.
The Palm Beach property Beau Site Sur Mer sold for $27.5 million to Wisetech billionaire Richard White.
Clarke & Humel’s Cherie Humel said for many homeowners, the lockdowns during COVID made them feel like their four walls were closing in on them.
With a high discretionary income and no travel to spend it on, they took to making plans for a new home “almost without abandon”.
Half of the suburb highs were set by properties that sold with no marketing and were instead offered to high-end shoppers privately.
“The off-market is busier than its ever been,” said Atlas’s Michael Coombs, whose Northbridge high of $25 million for the home of Link chairman Michael Carapiet sold in two weeks, before it could hit the market.
Off-market sales in nearby Castlecrag followed at $23.5 million for the waterfront home of Transurban chief executive Scott Charlton, and $22.2 million for the Neerim Park Estate in Castle Cove sold by Chinese superstars Tong Liya and film director Chen Sicheng.
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