Uig Lodge is on a much smaller 3300-square-metre parcel compared with Elaine’s almost 7000 square metres,but commands arguably the best views of Sydney Harbour thanks to its position on the highest point of Point Piper.
It tops the previous national house price record of$100 million set in 2018 by Farquhar’s Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes for another Fairfax family property in Point Piper,the 1.1 hectare estate Fairwater.
The most expensive residential deal is a $140 million apartment atop Lendlease’s Residences One tower at Barangaroo,but that is a consolidation of two apartments,the penthouse and sub-penthouse.
Point Piper now claims the three most expensive house sales in the country,including the $95 million sale of Edgewater togold mining businessman John Li,who exchanged on it in 2020,but is not due to settle on it until next year. Edgewater was partly owned by the Moss family,of the Katies fashion retail chain.
The sale of Uig Lodge,just days before Christmas,takes this year’s trophy home tally to almost $1 billion worth of high-end residential sales in thetop 20 sales alone.
The purchase will incur a stamp duty of more than $9 million.
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Uig Lodge has long been regarded as among Sydney’s best residences since it was built in the style of a Scottish baronial castle at the turn of last century by Lachlan Beaton,inaugural commissioner on the 1901 Sydney Harbour Trust and founding member of the Royal Sydney Golf Club.
In 1916,it sold for £5650 to medico Alexander Rutherford and his wife Marcia,of the Cobb&Co coach family,and from 1961 to 1976 it was owned by newspaper baron Ezra Norton,owner of the now defunctTruth andThe Daily Mirror newspapers.
Norton sold it in 1976 for $500,000 to the late Consul-General of Estonia and steel pipe manufacturing tycoon Aldur Kaljo,whose lavish parties became the stuff of legend until he died suddenly in 1994.
The Mosses commissioned a renovation of the heritage-listed residence by architects Stephen Gergely and New York-based Alan Wanzeburg that took three years to complete and included the gatekeepers’ cottage.
Farquhar was ranked Australia’s fourth-richest person when theAFR Rich List 200 was published in May,then given an estimated worth of $26 billion,but has sincedropped to number 12 and a worth of $5.16 billion on the back of a 60 per cent fall in Atlassian’s share price this year.
In July,Farquhar and Jackson bought an Avoca Beach holiday home for $10.85 million.