F45’s Rob Deutsch buys $25.5 million Barangaroo apartment

As Sydneysiders brace themselves for a potential interest rate hike by the Reserve Bank on Tuesday,there are no such concerns for F45 co-founder Rob Deutsch and his wife,Nicole Perso,after they bought an apartment in Crown’s One Barangaroo tower for $25.5 million with no mortgage.

It is the second trophy home purchase logged on title records by the couple in recent months after aBellevue Hill house bought for $37.5 million,again with no need for finance.

Deutsch co-founded the fitness franchise F45 with Adam Gilchrist (not the cricketer) in 2013,but cashed in on his share of the company in 2019 before its headline float on the US stock exchange two years ago.

At the time of the float,the company share priceopened at $US17 a share and rose to a peak of $US17.28 a month later before tumbling on a series of earnings downgrades. It was trading at US98 cents on Monday.

Gilchrist stepped down as chief executive last year and has sincesold two neighbouring Freshwater houses for a combined $22.8 million and listed two NSW North Coast investment properties.

Deutsch has pivoted from the fitness franchise business to the baby products industry,launching an online marketplace for baby brands calledMarkot last year.

Deutsch’s purchase in Crown’s landmark WilkinsonEyre-designed tower offered a handsome capital gain for Hong Kong-based businesswoman and vendor Huanhuan Zheng.

The four-bedroom,four-bathroom apartment last traded off the plan two years earlier for $22.5 million,equating to a $3 million jump in value in 24 months. It was listed with a $29 million guide last year.

Zheng had never lived in the apartment before she listed it with The Agency’s Steven Chen.

The 71-storey tower is densely populated bycorporate high-fliers and rich-listers,chief among them being Crown’s former majority shareholder James Packer,who owns a two-storey apartment he purchasedfor more than $72 million.

Among the most high-profile owners in the building are multimillionaire Robert Whyte,tech entrepreneur Rob Khuda,Bingo Industries’ Mary and Tony Tartak,western Sydney developer Arnold Vitocco,venture capitalist Bob Blann,LaserClinics’ Babak Moini,former Rothschild Australia chairman Trevor Rowe and Hong Kong commercial property magnate Tony Cheng.

Deutsch also owns a $19 million beachfront house on Queensland’s Mermaid Beach and thePatchway estate in the Southern Highlands,where he and Perso married late last year.