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Where do you go when you’ve sold Australia’s most expensive house for $130m?
By Lucy Macken
Rag traders Steven and Carol Moss have finally found just the right downsizer digs to replace their Scottish baronial mansion, Uig Lodge, that they sold 18 months ago for a record $130 million.
In the year since tech billionaire Scott Farquhar and his investment banker wife Kim Jackson took the keys to the country’s most expensive house, the Mosses had been expected to move to an apartment, if only they could find a decent one.
The Scottish baronial mansion of Steven and Carol Moss sold in late 2022 for $130 million.Credit: Steven Siewert
But it seems they’ll be downsizing to a house instead, for now at least, having purchased the Bellevue Hill designer digs of Anthony Tzaneros, of the ACFS freight family, and interior designer Poppy O’Neil Tzaneros.
The Mosses seem to have all the real estate luck. Their new home would be a relative bargain judging by the discount it copped since it was initially listed for sale late last year for $18 million.
Poppy and Anthony Tzaneros at their society wedding in 2020.
Multiple sources say the Mosses have paid between $14 million and $14.5 million, although the result remains undisclosed by TRG’s Gavin Rubinstein, understandably.
At least it scored a few superlatives in its favour when described by Rubinstein to his Instagram followers: “One of the highest quality finished, most elegantly designed properties Bellevue Hill has ever seen”.
To Poppy Tzaneros’s credit, it was a lavish rebuild. Having purchased what was a two-storey house in 2021 for $7.45 million when they married, it was gutted and reconfigured into a three-storey house with formal and informal living areas, high-end finishes throughout and a new infinity swimming pool.
It was listed last year with other agents before TRG took over the listing recently, and marketing for the property quietly slipped property websites this week.
The Bellevue Hill home of Poppy and Anthony Tzaneros was passed in on a vendor bid of $17.5 million at its November auction.Credit: Domain
Meanwhile, the Tzaneroses have already moved on, having paid $24.5 million late last year for the nearby mansion of businesswoman Deborah Ricci after it was listed for $23 million by Laing+Simmons’ D’Leanne Lewis.
The Moss family are arguably among the big success stories of the latest trophy home boom. Before they sold Uig Lodge, they also sold their half of Point Piper’s Edgewater mansion on behalf of Moss’s late father, Sam Moss, the cofounder of the Katies fashion empire. Gold-mining businessman John Changjin Li settled on the Moss family share at $47,497,000 in September last year but is yet to settle on the other half owned by Katies cofounder, Joe Brender.
From Crown to Coogee
Labor powerbroker-turned-casino lobbyist Karl Bitar and his wife Joanna are $8.4 million richer after they cashed in on a block of five apartments and a restaurant in Coogee.
Karl Bitar is the former national secretary of the Labor Party and a lobbyist for Crown Resorts.Credit: Jessica Hromas
Bitar was James Packer’s lobbyist for Crown Resorts when he purchased the art deco building on Coogee Bay Road in 2017 for $6.825 million. Title records reveal he bought it from a company owned by Nives Piccoli, the mother of former state National Party deputy leader Adrian Piccoli.
Lucky for Bitar, party lines were no longer any notional barrier given he had long since resigned as ALP national secretary when he bought it.
Bitar’s departure from the Coogee property market comes as his former boss and NSW premier Bob Carr buys in, having purchased a penthouse overlooking the beach for $8.8 million.
The Gables’ mystery buyer
Billionaire Sandy Oatley and his wife Carol have joined the upper north shore set, buying a heritage residence known as The Gables in Wahroonga for $12 million.
The Gables is the 1941-built, Tudor-style estate in Wahroonga that sold earlier this year for $12 million.Credit: Domain
The Gables is a Tudor-style estate on more than an acre with a tennis court and swimming pool, built in 1941 to a design by the architectural firm of the day, Peddle Thorp & Walker.
While it’s not the acreage the Oatleys own in Galston, it is one of the best heritage homes in Wahroonga.
The Oatley purchase had been a tightly kept secret by DiJones’ Lynette Malcolm since it sold in April by Xin Ye and Wujun Chen, and was only revealed after it settled in Carol Oatley’s name this week.
Sandy Oatley, of A. G. Oatley Wines, pictured at the family’s Hamilton Island last month.Credit: James Brickwood
The property last traded in 2015 for $5.55 million.
Oatley, the son of the late Bob Oatley, took over the family’s wine-making business last year, renaming it A. G. Oatley Wines, and was ranked on last week’s AFR Rich List 200 with an estimated wealth of $1.59 billion.
Mosman’s cash buyer
Welcome to Sydney Enquan Zheng, who is the $30 million cash buyer of the Mosman home of former pet food company boss David Grant and his wife, Lerida.
The Mosman home of David and Lerida Grant was redesigned by architect Adam Hampton complete with eight-car garage, nine bathrooms and a virtual golf range.
Records show Zheng is a director of ZRL Capital and George Australia Pty Ltd, and is currently selling a historic home known as Driffville and the house next door, in Canterbury, in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, for more than $15.6 million.
The Mosman house was a good investment for the Grants, even with the multimillion-dollar renovation during their ownership. They bought it in 2018 for $11 million from investment veteran Rob Luciano. It was sold by Atlas’s Michael Coombs and is the third-most expensive house sale in Mosman.