Sanchia Brahimi has traded in the Vaucluse house she long shared with her former husband,celebrity chef Guillaume Brahimi,to buy into Woolloomooloo’s landmark Finger Wharf for $11.7 million.
Sanchia and Guillaume Brahimi ended their high-profile marriage five years ago.
Brahimi’s purchase is among the most expensive to trade in the Lang Walker-developed former industrial wharf conversion,topped by Russell Crowe’s $14.35 million purchase in 2003 and the $15 million purchase of his neighbour John Laws in 2004.
Brahimi’s new four-bedroom penthouse was sold by Lisa Corban,wife of Wollongong car dealer Michael Corban,who had undertaken a major renovation of it since buying it a decade ago for $3.4 million.
Brahimi,the daughter of former rich-listers and philanthropists Charles and Eva Curran,timed the purchase of her Woolloomooloo downsizer digs with the settlement of her Vaucluse home,pocketing $17.15 million from Match Media founder John Preston and his PR consultant wife,Dee.
The Brahimi family’s former five-bedroom house – set between the harbourside Vaucluse beaches Kutti Beach and Gibsons Beach – last traded in 2004 for $6.5 million.
Coincidentally,Preston and Bates are now near neighbours to fashion designer Sarah-Jane Clarke and her landscape-architect husband Daniel Baffsky,from whom they bought their current Vaucluse home,freeing Clarke and Baffsky to buy their $12 million house on Gibsons Beach.
The Finger Wharf apartment sold for $11.7 million after a major renovation.Supplied
Brahimi and her partner,lawyer Paul Smith,have also recently joined the throngs of eastern suburbs identities buying into the Southern Highlands holiday home market,paying $4.75 million to buy a Berrima retreat from Alison McKenzie,the wife of Morgan Stanley’s head of institutional equities team,Will McKenzie.
Guillaume has since relocated to Watsons Bay,where he.
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