This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
VICTORIA’S house price record has been smashed by the sale of Toorak mansion Coonac, but mystery surrounds the exact sale price – speculated in some corners to be as much as $150 million, which if true would set a new Australian benchmark, too.
Coonac, which was owned by former Essendon AFL club chairman and former Toll Holdings boss Paul Little and his wife, Jane Hansen, chancellor of the University of Melbourne, is believed to have sold from $115 million to $150 million.
Anywhere in that bracket comfortably sets a new state record, which currently stands at the $80,000,088 paid by Australia’s youngest billionaire, cryptocurrency casino founder Ed Craven for the at 29-31 St Georges Road which had sat vacant for more than 30 years. Craven will reportedly splash out $145 million to overhaul the home.
Built in 1867, Coonac is a 20-room, double-storey Italianate mansion on 1.08 hectares of prime land in Melbourne’s most expensive suburb. It boasts a pool and cabana, tennis court, gardens, and has a 200-metre frontage to Clendon Road.
Little and Hansen paid $14.5 million for the property in 2002, and have undertaken extensive restorations.
Little was also head of developer Little projects, which he sold in 2018, three years after he sold logistics company Toll Holdings for $6.5 billion. Hansen is a former investment banker and executive. The pair have been busy renovating their Goodrest Mansion, also known as Simonds Hall, in nearby South Yarra, which they picked up from Christ Church Grammar School at the end of 2019 for $19.25 million.
The most ever paid for a home in Australia is $140 million, in 2019, for a combined penthouse and sub-penthouse at Lendlease’s One Sydney Harbour in Barangaroo. The identity of the buyer remains unknown.
Until that deal settles, the current title is held in parts by billionaire Altassian co-founder Scott Farquhar – across two separate Point Piper deals. One of them was his sale last year of mansion Elaine for $130 million, which he had bought in 2017 from the Fairfax family for $71 million. That matched the $130 million he had paid at the end of 2022 for Point Piper’s Uig Lodge.
But all of those would be left in the dust if Aussie Home Loans founder John Symond finds a buyer for his Point Piper waterfront mansion Wingadal, listed in April last year with expectations of more than $200 million.
Back in Toorak, Melbourne saw its largest home transaction of 2024 in the week leading up to the summer break, with 2 Macquarie Road fetching around $70 million – marking another major house sale below or at the bottom of price guidance in the blue-ribbon locale.
Melbourne’s famous Myer retailing family listed two mansions for sale within just a few weeks of each other – including the long-held Cranlana, which had a chance to be the first home ever in Melbourne to trade for at least $100 million. It remains on the market.
More than half of prestige home valuers expect price growth this year, although the biggest gains are likely to be seen in Western Australia, South Australia and NSW. Melbourne is set for modest price growth.
