He sold his studio to Netflix for $700m. Then he went on a $120m property spree
By Lucy Macken
Film animation pioneer Zareh Nalbandian has parlayed the windfall from the sale of his Animal Logic animation studio to Netflix into a $120 million property portfolio, the crowning jewel of which is a recently purchased $12 million luxury Byron Bay hinterland property.
Settlement reveals there was no mortgage required for Nalbandian and his wife Ping to settle on the house known as Nox, which has set a suburb record for the Talofa hinterland.
Nox in the Talofa hinterland near Byron Bay sold for $12 million to animation pioneer Zareh Nalbandian.Credit: Domain
McGrath’s Will Phillips had listed it with a bullish guide of $12 million on behalf of businesswoman Jacqui Pearce and her husband Dan Collins, who commissioned the Davis Architecture design with a slew of lifestyle add-ons such as a spa and swimming pool, 10-person sauna, ice bath, gymnasium, yoga studio and a parents retreat with “bath ritual room”.
Animal Logic co-founder Zareh Nalbandian joined the AFR Rich List 200 last year worth $800 million.Credit: Wolter Peeters
It was a multimillion-dollar home project for the couple, but even still, it offered a stonking gain given the one-acre lot cost $2.3 million in 2020.
The Longueville-based Nalbandian joined the ranks of the Australian Financial Review’s Rich List 200 last year worth an estimated $800 million thanks in large part to the sale a year earlier of his Animal Logic studio to streaming giant Netflix for reportedly more than $700 million.
Nalbandian and his Armenian parents emigrated from Egypt to Australia when he was six, and he co-founded Animal Logic in the early 1990s with Chris Godfrey. Their film credits include Happy Feet, The Matrix, and Peter Rabbit, and they collaborated with Baz Luhrmann on computer animation for The Great Gatsby and Moulin Rouge.
The one-acre block in Talofa last traded in 2020 for $2.3 million.Credit: Domain
Following the sale of Animal Logic, Nalbandian has developed a keen interest in real estate, forking out $108 million in less than two years for a slew of office, retail and commercial sites across Sydney’s inner west.
A former ice-cream factory in Camperdown was sold to Zareh Nalbandian’s corporate interests for $13.2 million.Credit: Domain
Chief among his investments is a converted warehouse in Surry Hills for $32.25 million, the Belltower office building in Eveleigh for $18.25 million and a converted ice-cream factory in Camperdown for $13.2 million from bitcoin entrepreneur Kain Warwick.
Home care pays off
Home care tycoon Jon Kontopos and his wife Corrine Beville, daughter of property tycoon John Beville, are gearing up for some hefty renovation work judging by their recent $30 million house purchase.
The couple is behind the recent purchase of a doer-upper on the Rose Bay beachfront that was billed as “liveable” before it was sold by Sotheby’s Michael Pallier.
The Rose Bay house was marketed as “liveable” before it sold for $30 million.Credit: Domain
The sale comes more than half a century after it last traded for $147,000 in 1973 and pits it alongside neighbouring trophy homes sold along the prized beachfront. Rag trader Nick Kelly paid $29 million in 2022 for an Espie Dods-designed house a few doors away, and Laser Clinic’s Alistair Champion sold a few months later for $35 million.
Kontopos and Beville are currently Bellevue Hill locals where, in 2018, Beville paid $10.45 million for the former home of property developer Michael Malouf.
Jon Kontopos and Corrine Beville are expected to renovate their newly purchased Rose Bay beachfront house.Credit: Sasha Woolley
Kontopos founded Caring Group in 2015, turning it into one of the country’s largest in-home care providers specialising in looking after seniors and people with disabilities or dementia.
A year ago, Asia-based private equity outfit Navis Capital acquired a majority stake in the company, paying a reported $150 million.
WIN TV headquarters
When billionaire media mogul Bruce Gordon next returns to Sydney to meet the chief and co-directors of WIN Television, many of them may choose to attend in their pyjamas, given how many of the company’s senior ranks now own boltholes in the same harbourside building.
The Quay Grand apartment sold by Agripower’s Peter Prentice to Genevieve Gordon for $6.4 million.Credit: Domain
Most recently it is the media mogul’s daughter Genevieve Gordon who has bought into the Quay Grand at Circular Quay, paying $6.4 million cash for a two-bedroom bolthole.
Genevieve Gordon sits on the boards of WIN TV and the St George Illawarra Rugby League Football Club, as well as heads up WIN’s radio division.Credit:
Gordon and her husband, British racing car driver Tom Oliphant, are based in Wollongong, where she has been taking on ever-more-demanding roles at WIN, heading up radio and sitting on the boards of WIN and the St George Illawarra Rugby League Football Club. She also sits on the board of the family company Birketu, which happens to be the largest shareholder of Nine (publisher of this masthead).
Gordon’s newly purchased spread shares the same in-your-face view of the harbour as that of her parents, Judith and Bruce Gordon’s apartment, the first half of which cost $3 million in 2008 before next door was added in 2016 for $9 million as a home away from their Bermuda estate.
Then there’s the upstairs apartment that WIN chief executive and Nine board member Andrew Lancaster purchased two years ago for $8 million as his Sydney base. Alas, WIN chairman and Gordon Snr’s son Andrew Gordon is one of the few among the network’s top ranks yet to buy into the Mirvac-developed block.
Genevieve’s apartment was an off-market purchase from Southern Highlands-based Agripower boss Peter Prentice and settled to her name just in time for this week’s start of the Vivid Sydney 2024 festival.
Gordon Snr isn’t the only billionaire in the building. Miner Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest purchased his pad in the block in 2006 for $5.98 million, and in 2020 added next door for $12.6 million. He has since started a consolidation of the two apartments.