When Sydney’s rich list and their heirs are not busy on large-scale home rebuilds, it seems many are buying their neighbours’ houses in the pursuit of ever more space.
Take Adriana Gardos, the daughter of the late Transfield/Tenix boss Carlo Salteri, who with her husband Robert has bought a Castlecrag house with tennis court and a pool on a double block of waterfront reserve for $11.6 million.
The seven-bedroom, five-bathroom house with tennis court and pool was bought for $11.6 million.
The couple is currently building a two-storey residence with a pool on the double block next door, and in which they no doubt plan to live without the fear of living next door to someone else’s home rebuild job.
Amassing the parcel of what now totals 2900 square meters didn’t come cheap. Atlas’ Michael Coombs started with a guide of $9 million to $9.9 million, but with 14 contracts out the Gardos family were forced to dig deep to secure it the day before auction.
The Salteri family co-founded Transfield in 1956 with the Belgiorno-Nettis family, before the company was split and the Salteris took the defense contracting operations into Tenix. Tenix Defense was sold to BAE Systems in 2008 for $775 million, and the rest of the company’s assets sold to Downer EDI in 2014 for $300 million.
The Salteri family already lay claim to the Castlecrag suburb high, set in 2015 when brother Paul Salteri, the former chairman of Tenix, sold the nearby Penhallow estate for $12.8 million.
The Salteri family from left: Robert Salteri, Adriana Gardos, Carlo Salteri, Mary Shaw and Paul Salteri.Credit:
Sister Mary Shaw is still in the neighborhood, having bought two waterfront houses in the mid-1980s, knocking down one to make way for a tennis court, and snapping up a third house next door in 2003 for $4.3 million.
Shaw and her husband Alexander bought again locally from neurologist and Rhodes scholar Professor John Watson, paying $4.075 million.