Darling Point Apartment Sets Suburb Record

The sale of an apartment for over $25 million in Sydney’s blue-ribbon enclave of Darling Point has set a new suburb record.

Not only is it the highest sale for the Sydney suburb for more than 18 months, but also steams past the previous $16.8 million record for an apartment set in June by the off-the-plan sale of a development on Yarranabbe Road.

The exact price paid for the home remains undisclosed by 1^st City Double Bay’s Julian Hasemer. The property was listed less than two weeks ago with a $25 million guide and has sold well before the November 4 deadline.

According to posts by the agency’s social media accounts, the result came in at more than $25 million.

The apartment in question is a two-storey spread that has formal and informal living areas and uninterrupted harbour views to the city skyline, five bedrooms an internal lift and a swimming pool.

The apartment sold was one of two in the block built by yachtie Hugo van Kretschmar and his wife Karen after they bought the site in 2004 for $7 million and acquired the talents of Allen Jack+Cottier Architects to have them designed.

The couple kept one apartment – prior to its recent sale, with the lower-level apartment sold six months before completion to Thelma Levin wife of Park Lane Fashions boss Mervyn Levin.

A 110-year-old Colorado estate that has hosted Frank Sinatra and Lyndon B. Johnson just slashed $10 million off its price tag.

The 12,000-square-foot manor house—with 25 rooms—and its five accessory dwelling in the alpines of Evergreen was relisted on Friday asking $16.8 million, down from its initial $26.8 million price in 2023.

The sellers, Richard and Pamela Bard, who paid $1.3 million for the “legacy property” named Greystone Estate in 1992, have shopped it around on and off for the past 20 years, according to agent Jessica Northrop at Compass Real Estate.

Richard Bard, CEO of his own private equity firm, has “hosted many corporate events and retreats where important business is discussed but they are also able to relax,” Northrop said. “Greystone has a special way of making people feel at ease.”

Bard said “it’s not a casual effort” to sell. He said it’s difficult to find a buyer with the facilities to “take care of it.”

The Bards intend to move closer to their children in Denver.

Before the Bards, Greystone Estate had several eras—as a summer house, a guest ranch and a business base—since it was built in 1915 by Genevieve Phipps, an industrialist’s daughter.

Phipps, who spent her inheritance on the land, built the 54-acre summer escape with the “elegance and feel of a fine Adirondack mansion combined with a mountain rustic style,” according to an online record of the estate’s history.

Its heyday, arguably in the 1940s to 1980s, saw Sinatra, Johnson and Groucho Marx come through its doors, when its owner William Sandifer, a socialite and one the Empire State Building’s architects, operated a guest ranch out of the place.

The Bards, who used a carriage house on the property as their company headquarters, completed Greystone’s full modernization in 1997. They also opened up the living and dining areas to receive more light, raised the ceiling on the upper level and combined several rooms to create a primary suite.

They replaced an outdoor pavilion and its helipad with something more suitable for their daughter’s wedding in 2001, according to Northrop.

The main 25-room manor includes a wine cellar, bar, gym and library.

The additional structures, which include a cottage, a log cabin, a pool house, a carriage house and a pavilion and guest house, surround the pool area and overlook acres of aspen groves and mountains.

Darling Point Apartment Sets Suburb Record

Inside this record breaking $25 million-plus sale.

The 25-room mansion was built for an heiress and later belonged to a socialite and architect on the Empire State Building.