No. 1/33 Benelong Crescent, Bellevue Hill, sold for “a tad under $4.5m”, down from the $5.5m price guide of a year ago.
Art dealer Denis Savill has been on a spending spree during COVID-19, snapping up a luxury Sydney apartment at a $1m discount and a Port Douglas escape sight unseen for $420k.
“I’ve lived through Keating’s banana republic and the massive stockmarket crash of ‘87,” says the doyen, who is just weeks away from his 80th birthday.
“I’ve been through these highs and lows — in the good times I pretend I’m a squirrel and put a few nuts away, but now I’m out spending … I decided to let fly in late August and September.”
He’s also splashed $200k on 27 items from the estate of his art collector friend John Schaeffer and artworks including an Arthur Boyd titled ‘Four times a day’, purchased privately from Victoria.
“It has increased in value by 900 per cent since I first owned it,” Savill said.
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No. 1/33 Benelong Crescent, Bellevue Hill, is the home of artist Sara Cusack Cox.
It has been renovated in a French Provincial style and has 467 sqm on title.
Some of the beautiful art is now lining the walls of a two-bedroom Paddington apartment, up for auction next Thursday via Craig Pontey and Violet Farebrother of Ray White Double Bay which has a guide of just under $2m.
“I bought it for my daughter and she no longer needs it, so I’m going to use the money to buy a bigger place in Paddington for my kids,” Savill said.
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The Bellevue Hill apartment was the Benelong Crescent apartment of artist Sara Cusack Cox, first listed last spring with a $5.5m guide with Brad Pillinger of Pillinger.
Sources other than Pillinger and Savill recently tipped off the Wentworth Courier of the sale price — “a tad under $4.5m” — and its famous purchaser.
No. 9/24-28 Gordon St, Paddington is up for auction next Thursday.
It has a terrace with views over the district.
The four-bedroom, four-bathroom home has been renovated in a French Provincial style and has 467 sqm on title.
“It’s virtually a house,” Pillinger told the Wentworth Courier last year. “Perfect for downsizers who want a bit of space but also families.”
There are sunny terraces and Juliet balconies with views over Bellevue Hill to the harbour from the upper level; private lift access and double garaging.
The garden has a mosiac-tiled pool. Cox had bought it for $3.09 million in 2013.
It’s understood Cox has entered into a leaseback arrangement for the Benelong Crescent residence with Savill while she builds in Drumalbyn Road.
That will suit Savill, who resides, with wife Anne Clarke, who he met on a plane a decade ago, in a Stephen Gergely-designed Bellevue Hill residence purchased for $6.6m in Foster Avenue, Bellevue Hill in 2015.
Denis Savill and his partner Anne Clarke have bought a Port Douglas unit for $420k.
Savill says his one-bedroom apartment is on the top floor and “the premier unit in the building”.
That property, bought via Michael Pallier of Sotheby’s, has solid security and three levels of floor space for his new Boyd along with his Charles Blackman and Jeffrey Smart pieces.
Savill, who was an agent and auctioneer with LJ Hooker Double Bay for many years ahead of his purchase of the Gordon Marsh Gallery in Double Bay, Sydney in 1981, rebranding to Savill Galleries in 1984 and move to 156 Hargrave Street, Paddington, in 1987, said his Port Douglas buy a month ago was “a bit of fun”.
The fact he couldn’t get up to inspect it first wasn’t an issue: “Half the paintings I’ve bought in the past year have been sight-unseen,” he said.
“I’ve been in the building many times and I’ve got a very good lawyer in Port Douglas, who’s checked through the paperwork.”
Tailor Patrick Johnson and his interior designer wife, Tamsin, bought Kendall Lodge in Darling Point for more than $10m.
And with Australia’s wealthy unable to head Europe for their holidays, he thinks he’s on a winner.
“I’m on the top floor facing directly onto the beach … Jack Thompson and Barry Humphries have resided here, it’s the premier unit in the building!” he said.
“I believe Port Douglas is the Riviera of the north — we can’t go to France or Monte Carlo, when Gladys realises we aren’t all dying of COVID … Melbourne’s still a bit dusty but coming out of it … everyone’s going to be thinking they should be up there.
“I’m putting Port Douglas on the map.
“A lot of Australians will find with COVID that for the next couple of years they’ll have to go on holiday internally … Port Douglas is easy and a lot of Victorians had already crept up there and were in residence ahead of the shutdown!”
It will be interesting to see what Tamsin does with the famous Florence Broadhurst wallpaper.
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With the art work, like the prestige houses market, firing during COVID-19, Savill said he felt fortunate to have seen the opportunities that exist.
“The art market has soared in the past 12 weeks — there’s a very small supply and it’s the same with property,” he said.
Many others, too, have capitalised on the opportunities that exist. James Hannan, chief operating officer of printing firm Ovato and son of Michael Hannan who previously owned the Wentworth Courier, has bought a $9m home in Bellevue Hill, upgrading from the Double Bay apartment he sold for close to $4.4m in Double Bay.
Only two years ago, one of the owners of the house, Christina Sachs Phillips, director of neoprene bag line Cub + Scout and wife of property investor William Phillips, had described it as her “forever home” in newspaper reports.
Also tailor Patrick Johnson and interior designer Tamsin Johnson returned to their former Darling Point neighbourhood after selling their Tamarama home recently for $5.65m and buying Kendall Lodge for more than $10m, down from the $12m asking price in March.
It will be interesting to see what Tamsin does with the Florence Broadhurst wallpaper.
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