Waterfront dreams: Inside the $25 million property portfolio Dick Smith’s daughter built
Waterfront properties are hot this winter, as philanthropist, luxury lodge founder and daughter of entrepreneur Dick Smith, Hayley Baillie and her husband James can attest. Their latest purchase takes their luxury residential property portfolio to more than $25 million.
The couple have spent $11.85 million on a three-bedroom unit at the exclusive Pier development in Walsh Bay, which has a wraparound balcony with views of the harbour across to Blues Point.
Luxury hoteliers James and Hayley Baillie have quietly amassed a residential property portfolio in recent years.Credit: Peter Braig
While it is not known why the pair bought the home, it is the latest, and most expensive, addition to the Baillies’ impressive residential property portfolio that has tipped over $25 million, comprising waterfront properties on the northern beaches from Manly to Avalon Beach that they have picked up in the past few years.
It is a drop in the ocean for the Baillies, who own an even more impressive portfolio of luxury lodges, through their company Baillie Lodges, around Australia and abroad, from Lord Howe Island to Uluru to their iconic and award-winning Southern Ocean Lodge on Kangaroo Island, which was burnt down in the 2020 bushfires.
The Walsh Bay unit was sold through Richard Shalhoub, of McGrath Millers Point, who declined to comment on the sale.
The Walsh Bay unit is the Baillies’ latest and most expensive purchase.Credit:
The home was part of the deceased estate of renowned architect Peter Muller, who passed away at the age of 95 in February.
The Baillies bought this Manly pad in 2021 for $7.2 million. Credit: Domain
Muller, who received an Order of Australia in recognition of his work in 2014, bought the property in the name of his wife, Carole, for $3,395,000 some two decades ago.
The Lavender Bay collection
Medico entrepreneur and pathologist Dr Chris Douglas has also been busy shoring up more waterfront properties to his growing portfolio, amassing $49.7 million worth in less than six months.
Douglas has bought into the Aqualand development Blue at Lavender Bay for $7.5 million, making him a neighbour to interesting fellow owners in the block such as NSW Governor Margaret Beazley.
Blue at Lavender Bay overlooks Sydney Harbour.Credit:
His first Lavender Bay purchase was back in February when he dropped a cool $42.2 million on Idlemere – a historic waterfront Victorian manor – spending an easy $2 million above the guide at the time.
In that time, his wife Lynda Van Der Weegen traded their elegant Homebush home at Abbotsford Road for $7,425,000 at auction.
Through the pandemic, Douglas’ business Histopath Diagnostic Specialists expanded thanks to COVID-19 testing from 70 staff to 1000 and CEO Magazine described the business as “the tester-of-choice” at Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane airports.
Bankers make trades
Bankers have been busy trading properties too as they are some of the few winners in the broader economic slowdown.
Macquarie Bank’s global head of mining and energy finance for the commodities and global markets group Vanessa Lenthall has bought a knockdown home in North Bondi for $7,705,000.
The four-bedroom house, within walking distance of Bondi Beach, last traded for just $145,000 in 1983, and it is thought that Lenthall will redevelop the block with a new home.
It was sold through Warren Ginsberg of Ray White Double Bay and Zorick Toltsan of Ray White Commercial Eastern Suburbs who declined to comment.
The Castlecrag home spans three levels.Credit:
Lenthall is in good company in the latest multi-millionaire dollar purchase in the neighbourhood that has transformed North Bondi’s Ben Buckler headland from a hipster refuge for surfers, actors and a handful of professionals into millionaires’ row.
AfterPay’s Nick Molnar led the charge in 2021, spending $27 million on his clifftop NoBo home and adding the block next door for about $18.5 million, while Harry Triguboff’s daughter Dr Orna Triguboff also bought a block of apartments in the neighbourhood for $11.5 million a few months later.
Meanwhile, Macquarie Bank’s head of personal banking Ben Perham has sold his Castlecrag house for $5.5 million with the hopes of trading up like his colleague.
Perham sold the five-bedroom house with views across the valley to Sailors Bay from the ridgeline to Supreme Court solicitor Tomoko Yamamoto, founder of Yamamoto Attorneys. It sold through Ray White Lower North Shore’s Stewart Gordon, who declined to comment.
Perham bought the three-level property for $3,128,000 in 2011 and while he is still waiting to make his next move, he owns another property, with his filmmaker wife Kate Riedl, a Palm Beach weekender with stunning views that they paid $6 million for in 2017.