REAL ESTATE
Riverfront property shares border with exclusive private school TSS
Rare opportunity to buy into exclusive enclave bordering The Southport School.
IT IS an enclave that offers the Gold Coast’s most exclusive riverfront living and, for the first time since 2013, the entry door is about open to aspiring buyers with millions to spend.
A house in a strip that has only 12 homes, and where the last sale was at nearly $10 million, is poised to come on to the market at $11.5 million.
The 1 Winchester St property, owned by property entrepreneur Bea Jeanes and which has the riverfront The Southport School as its southern neighbour, is the first of a line of properties that stretch north to Wildash St.
It is a blue-riband area where the owners quietly exude wealth but in which the biggest sale was, by contrast, at the hands of receivers.
That house, which at one point wore a $20 million price tag, sold for $9.8 million.
Those who today call the riverfront haven home include Ms Jeanes’ daughter Thea Jeanes-Cochrane and her husband, Gold Coast Suns chairman and former V8 Supercars el supremo Tony Cochrane.
Riviera Marine founder Bill Barry-Cotter, car dealer Brett Frizelle, transport company owner Peter Smith, and cotton farmer Tom Hadley are also neighbours.
Former residents include ex-Coles Myer head Brian Quinn (jailed), developer Graham Spottiswood (bankrupted), and Split-Cycle engine proponent Rick Mayne (deceased).
The two-level home at 1 Winchester St, which has been in Jeanes hands for 35 years, is on a 1682sq m site.
Michael Kollosche, principal of Kollosche Prestige Agents, yesterday said that the appeal of the area to its wealthy residents lay in the views east and north toward Paradise Waters and the size and privacy of the lots.
“The people who have targeted it tend to stay for years and, with such a small number of properties, opportunities for a front seat, with fabulous views, on the riverfront rarely come along.”
Mr Kollosche, who is marketing the home with his agency’s joint principal, Jordan Williams, said the Jeanes house was remodelled, via architect Baden Goddard in 2009, at a cost of more than $1 million.
The 500sqm home, which has a 22-metre river frontage, gained a larger kitchen, a more-open living area, new bathrooms, a new fireplace, a media room, and gazebos.
“Ms Jeanes wants to travel more and doesn’t want to go away and be worrying about the house,” Mr Kollosche said.
He said auction deals at $9.8
million and $9.5 million on the riverfront strip at the tail end of the GFC were “distress” sales and both properties today would fetch “many millions more”.
“In fact, if the land was available, the replacement cost in both cases would be nudging $20 million.”
The $9.8 million sale on the riverfront strip, in early 2013, was by receivers and involved Alston, a mansion which failed developer Mr Spottiswood had called home.
In mid-2012 receivers sold a nearby property, linked to bankrupted property marketeer Dudley Quinlivan, for $9.5 million.