Fancy a pad on the beach or getaway in the hills?
The Point Piper mansion Altona has sold for more than $60 million to a billionaire family from China.
A caveat on title names the buyers as the Hunters Hill-based Huang family, including Jiaer Huang, a Liberal Party donor and BRW Rich Lister. Huang is chairman of China’s paper manufacturing company Shantou Dongfeng Printing, which prints for tobacco and other industries.
That company was founded by Huang’s father, billionaire tycoon Huang Bingwen, whose wealth was estimated at $1.99 billion in this year’s BRW Rich List, making him Australia’s 20th richest person.
Altona has sold for more than $60 million to a billionaire family from China. Photo: Supplied
Details on the deal remain shrouded in secrecy and will surprise some prestige agents who were scheduled to take more buyers through Australia’s most famous trophy home over the weekend and early next week.
The exact sale price is expected to remain unknown until the settlement of the property, which includes the whole waterfront estate after earlier plans to subdivide the property were abandoned.
The adjoining vacant block of land was sold for $18 million earlier this year, but the sale fell through after objections to the subdivision scuttled the deal.
A caveat on the title names the buyers as the Hunters Hill-based Huang family. Photo: Supplied
Altona’s ownership has proved one of the most enduring mysteries since it last traded in 2013 for $52 million in a family trust, Chaimovich Investments, fronted by an elderly woman from Melbourne, Ding Xiuzhen.
Ding has never visited Sydney, nor the grand waterfront mansion she holds in her name.
No more was known of the owners until last year, when a Domain investigation revealed the true owner to be wealthy businessman Wang Zhijun, who heads the Qingdao Anteisin Group, which has interests extending from luxury residential property developments to mines and golf resorts in China.
The Victorian Italianate-style mansion was built in 1904 for MP and Supreme Court judge Augustus James and his wife Altona. Photo: Supplied
At the time of his purchase Wang held only a temporary 457 work visa, rather than permanent residency or Australian citizenship.
News of the sale brings to an end an ugly family dispute among the paper-only owners of the property. In the three years since the Melbourne-based family of Ding Xiuzhen fronted the trust, the pressures of owning it has left relations among Ding’s children Victor and Holly Chang in tatters, with all communication now through lawyers.
Holly Chang told Domain last month that the family’s involvement with Altona has “brought nothing but stress and greed to my family”.
Details on the deal remain shrouded in secrecy and will surprise some prestige agents. Photo: Michele Mossop
“We all thought it was going to be this lovely house, but it has left me estranged from my son, my brother, my mother, father and my sister,” she told Domain.
Holly Chang had requested the tax office reopen its investigation into the circumstances under which Altona was purchased.
The Victorian Italianate-style mansion was built in 1904 for MP and Supreme Court judge Augustus James and his wife Altona, and became better known as the house of conspicuous consumption in more recent decades thanks to the many celebrity visitors who stayed there and the lavish parties hosted by its high-profile owners.
From left, back: Holly Chang, sister Jane, brother Victor. Front: Holly’s father Fuan Chang and mother Ding Xiuzhen. Photo: Supplied
Previous owners include publisher Matt Handbury and former wife Fiona Campbell, who sold it in 2002 for $28 million to former publishing mogul Deke Miskin and his bikini-designer wife Eve. The Miskins sold it in 2013 to Wang for $53 million, setting a then Sydney house record.
The national house record was reset last year at $70 million, when casino mogul James Packer and former wife Erica Packer sold to Australian-Chinese businessman Chau Chak Wing.