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Melissa Caddick’s Edgecliff penthouse primed for Spring sale
By Lucy Macken
The final blue-chip asset from the estate of fraudster Melissa Caddick is set to hit the market after receivers finally settled on the Edgecliff penthouse that was until recently home to her parents Ted and Barb Grimley.
This is the three-bedroom apartment atop the Eastpoint Tower that Caddick purchased in her name in 2016 for $2.55 million and persuaded her parents to pay $1 million for a third ownership and a life tenancy.
The three-bedroom penthouse in Eastpoint Tower is the last of the blue-chip assets to be sold from the estate of Melissa Caddick.Credit: Domain
However, like many of Caddick’s friends and family from whom she stole about $23.5 million, she didn’t pay down the mortgage and instead spent the money on jewellery and a jet-setter’s lifestyle.
Bruce Gleeson, of Jones Partners, confirmed they secured vacant possession of the Eastpoint Tower penthouse after the Grimleys were paid almost $1 million on Monday to vacate the property.
Melissa Caddick has been missing, presumed dead, since November 2020.
“We will now commence preparing the Edgecliff property for sale and the process of appointing a real estate agent with the aim of taking … [it] to market around the beginning of Spring,” Gleeson said.
Caddick has been missing, now presumed dead, since November 2020, just hours after her Dover Heights home was raided by the corporate regulator, ASIC. Her partial remains washed up in a running shoe on remote Bournda Beach, on the South Coast, three months later.
About $7 million has so far been recouped from the sell-off of Caddick’s jewellery, cars, artwork and her Dover Heights home, which was among last Spring’s high-profile house sales at $9.8 million.
Once the penthouse has been primped and preened ahead of the marketing campaign, it’s hoped it will secure one of the top sales results in the building. The benchmark is currently set at a high of $5.1 million for the neighbouring penthouse which was sold in late 2018 by former car dealer Neil Sutton to developer John Roth.
The Mirvac-built tower has long claimed a who’s who of homeowners since it was built in the early 1980s, including the late Lady (Florence) Packer and more recently, mining heiress Leonie Baldock.
Spring in July
It used to be that agents launched their best homes sales campaigns in August to get the jump on the deluge of listings in Spring, but it looks like July is the new August.
Cedarvale is the 20-hectare holiday retreat purchased by Hamish and Lucinda McLennan in 2011 for $2.9 million.Credit: Domain
Rugby Australia boss Hamish McLennan and his wife Lucinda know it. They are set to launch their Berry holiday home, Cedarvale, following their purchase of a house in Darling Point for about $30 million from Olympic gold medallist-turned-recruitment boss Mark Kerry and his interior designer wife Lynda.
Hamish McLennan is the chair of Rugby Australia and REA Group.Credit: Brook Mitchell
The McLennans’ 20-hectare property in Jaspers Brush – purchased for $2.9 million in 2011 – doubles as something of a glamorous hobby farm given the 20-odd cattle on it.
Ray White Gerringong’s Neil Campbell has the listing honours.
No sign yet on what the McLennans plan to do with their Lavender Bay home, Alta Mura, purchased from Daniel Petre in 2016 for $7.4 million, but there is no shortage of agents already lining up to offer their services.
Likewise, in Woollahra, Laser Clinics co-founder Alistair Champion and his wife Kate had already asked The Agency’s Ben Collier to quietly show their Victorian residence, Icilus, to select buyers before they officially launched it on Friday for what sources say is more than $25 million.
The Champions purchased it in 2017 for $13.5 million.
The Champions are widely tipped to be behind the $69 million sale of the Point Piper waterfront home of businessman Simon Ehrlich and investor Rebecca Lacey earlier this year, although he denied doing so through an intermediary.
Laser Clinics Australia co-founder Alistair Champion is widely tipped to have bought in Point Piper for $69 million.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
Up the road there is talk another grand Victorian residence is set to hit the market, this time through Sotheby’s, owned by National Australia Bank’s former markets boss Drew Bradford and his wife Alison.
The long-time senior banking executive resigned from the bank in March and, according to LinkedIn, he is now director of special projects at crypto fund manager JellyC.
Leading landscape designer Will Dangar is also set to sell his striking Bondi semi, Bismarck House.
Bismarck House is being sold by Will and Julia Dangar with a $5.5 million guide.Credit: Prue Ruscoe
Dangar and his wife Julia purchased it in 2017 for $2.44 million and rebuilt it three years ago as an experiment in design and architecture that shows off Dangar’s skills, the couple’s Robert Plumb Build business, as well as the design of architect Andrew Burges.
Run as an Airbnb for much of the time since it was completed, the house has a guide of $5.5 million through PPD’s Alexander Phillips, making it one of about 30 listings he has set to hit the market in coming weeks.