VILLA VENETTA - POINT PIPER SYDNEY. $52 million record sale

Property shakes off winter blues with $52m sale
Jonathan Chancellor PROPERTY EDITOR
September 2, 2010

Six bedrooms and nine bathrooms . . . Villa Veneto at Point Piper, and Andrea Banks.

SYDNEY'S prestige property market has woken from its hibernation with the reputed $52 million record sale of a Point Piper harbourfront property, Villa Veneto.

The bullish deal almost doubles the highest sale since the onset of the global financial crisis in September 2008.

The grand five-storey Italianate villa owned by recruitment entrepreneur Andrew Banks and his wife, Andrea, was finished in 2004, having taken two years and $15 million to build on its dress circle Wolseley Road location.
Grand five-storey Italianate 'Villa Veneto', Wolseley Road, Point Piper. $52m Villa Veneto Point Piper

Designed by the architect Michael Suttor, the six-bedroom house comes with a 21-person lift, home theatre, butler's pantry, glass-roofed dining room, sauna, art gallery, gym, linen chute and library. It comes with nine bathrooms - including one for the gardener.

The couple bought the 1424-square-metre double block for $14 million in 2001, when they gave their residential address as Trump Tower in New York. The empty nest couple still spend much of their time in United States, which is home to their two children, Nick and Sophia, with their respective American actor spouses.

Mr Banks heads the recruitment company, Talent2 International, indirectly holding 29 million shares which trade on the ASX at about $1.42 a share. He and co-founder Geoff Morgan sold their earlier recruitment company, Morgan & Banks, for $380 million in 1999.

Since the stockmarket implosion inspired by the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008, Sydney prestige house price dealings have been few and far between.

The highest sale in the past two years has been $26.75 million in Vaucluse.

A 7500-square-metre Perth residential compound with three houses on the Swan River at Mosman Park fetched $57.5 million in 2009.

Wolseley Road has become Australia's most expensive road. Residents include retailer Frank Lowy and wife, Shirley, the racing manager heir to Coolmore stud fortune, Tom Magnier, property developer Ron Medich, and another recruitment entrepreneur, Julia Ross.