Art collector Danny Goldberg leads who’s who of holiday home shoppers

The Agency’s Ben Olufsen declined to reveal the sale result, but sold the four-bedroom residence in a week to the six-time Archibald Prize finalist, making a tree-change from the Cronulla home he and his wife Simone sold in December for $4.6 million.

On the Central Coast, powertools wholesaler David Mills, known as the “eBay Man”, set a $6.03 million record at Patonga when he bought a Hamptons-style beachfront house through Stuart Gan.

Mills also set a Seaforth record in 2017 when he bought his Sydney waterfront home for $12.675 million. All of which makes good timing for vodka baron Julian Moss, given he has listed his Hawkesbury River home of the past 25 years, Lambourne Estate.

Moss is the former IT recruitment businessman whose VDKA 6100 was launched in 2014, with backing from James Packer and designed by Hollywood heavyweight Robert De Niro.

In 1996, he purchased his historic homestead on 14 hectares of river frontage at Lower Portland for $950,000 from veteran stockbroker Brent Potts, to create what is now more like a millionaire’s playground given the tennis court, pool, boat shed, pontoon, equestrian facilities and separate guest house.

Expect to pay $14 million to $15 million through Christie’s Darren Curtis and Vella Iverson’s Trent Iverson.

DA plans in the works

In Bellevue Hill, the landmark Kharkov House set above a distinctive semi-circular sandstone retaining wall might be headed for demolition, if Quadrant Private Equity’s Jonathon Pearce and his wife Zoe get their way.

The couple have lodged a DA with Woollahra Council to demolish the 1914-built residence to make way for a three-storey house with a swimming pool and three basement levels, at a cost of just shy of $8 million.

The construction costs are almost as much as the $8.8 million the couple paid for the house in 2018, when sold by medico specialists Tania Markovic and Olav Nielssen, who had commissioned their own redesign by architect Huw Turner with a cantilevered glass lift.

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Meanwhile, tech entrepreneur Patrick Grove has hit a stumbling block on the construction of his dream home on the Darling Point waterfront.

The co-founder and chief of Catcha Group paid $28 million in 2017 for a rundown house that won approval to be demolished a year later to make way for a two-storey residence with a pool.

An amended DA to excavate and create an underground cellar was also given a tick, but a more recent bid to double the size of the cellar has been rejected following a slew of complaints from neighbours.