Australia’s priciest apartment atop Sydney’s ANZ Tower hits market for $66 million

From the street the landmark ANZ Tower looks like just another corporate building full of nine-to-five white-collar workers but what most Sydneysiders don’t know is that hidden away on the top three floors is the priciest apartment in the country.

It’s been a little-known secret, until now.

On Saturday an international marketing campaign kicks off offering it to the world’s ultra wealthy for $66 million.

The pool atop John Boyd’s $66-million Sydney penthouse. Photo: Screenshot from Goldeneye Media promotional video.

The “sky mansion” is a catalogue of one-offs, and not just in price. Set above ANZ’s Sydney headquarters it is the only apartment in the commercial building.

Billed “the best penthouse to come onto the Australian market”, its very existence only came about because the property developer owner included it in the original negotiations when he sold the site in 2009.

John Boyd consolidated five sites on Castlereagh and Pitt Streets over a decade before he sold the lot to developer Grocon in 2009, retaining the rights to the level 43 penthouse as part of the negotiations.

John and Marly Boyd’s main living room, the “great” room, sits at the centre of the three-storey penthouse. Photo: Supplied

ANZ Tower was completed in 2013 and the design by architect Richard Francis-Jones won the firm Francis-Jones Morehen Thorp the office category at the World Architecture Festival the following year.

But the home of Boyd and his wife Marly took longer. Completed in 2015 with dramatic interiors by Blainey North it was named the world’s finest residence at the International Design & Architecture Awards last year.

The 2000-square-metre abode is accessed by an express lift from a private car park totalling 400 square metres. All finishes are bespoke and more than 200 pieces of art deco-inspired furniture were commissioned to furnish it.

All four bedrooms in The Boyd Residence come wih a marble-finished en suite. Photo: George Apostolidis

The four-bedroom home of the Boyds and their toddler son Patrick features the “great” room set into the building’s distinctive crescent-shaped roof and includes an internal lift, a conference room, a club-like study, gymnasium, a cigar room for smaller dinner parties, and on the rooftop a swimming pool, two terraces and cabana lounge.

“It’s hard for me to think of another apartment in the world like this,” said Mr Francis-Jones. “There are many, many penthouses around the world that are beautiful but one that is so embedded in the architecture, one that actually is the crown of the building, I can’t think of one like this.”

Ken Jacobs, of Christie’s International, and Bill Malouf, of LJ Hooker Double Bay, are the exclusive listing agents.

Marly and John Boyd on their wedding day in 2012. Photo: Facebook

The Boyd Residence is hoped to smash the $60 million apartment record set in Crown Resorts’ One Barrangaroo development even before the future home of casino mogul James Packer is built.

The only other apartment sale that comes close is also in the harbourfront casino development bought off-the-plan for more than $40 million by veteran venture capitalist Bob Blann. Mr Blann’s 515 square metre spread equates to $77,670 per square metre.

Mr Boyd’s three-level apartment equates to $33,000 per square metre. Strata levies on The Boyd Residence are between $20,000 and $22,000 a year.

ANZ Tower has a distinctive crescent-shaped crown into which The Boyd Residence is built.

“There are a number of Australians who will be unaware this even exists,” said Mr Malouf. “There’s nothing else in Australia that compares with this penthouse.”

Just as the sale of the Elaine estate in Point Piper last year for $71 million has helped to reset Australia’s trophy market, so too is The Boyd Residence expected to help recalibrate the trophy apartment strata market.

“This property will be the yardstick by which all the others are measured,” said Mr Jacobs.

The rooftop pool sits on the building’s western side.

London’s most expensive apartment was set at £140 million in 2014 for in the One Hyde Park development in Knightsbridge. In New York, the highest apartment sale exchanged the same year for $US100.47 million in the One57 tower in Manhattan.

John Boyd’s home property portfolio also includes his Bellevue Hill mansion, his Southern Highlands retreat Robertson Park, and a Palm Beach weekender.

He married Marly, 27 years his junior, in 2012. The couple were best man and bridesmaid at last year’s wedding of their friend luxury car importer Neville Crichton and his wife Nadi.