Weatherman Grant Denyer spends $1.95 million as Title Tattle puts Sutherland Shire property under the spotlight

Grant Denyer, the Sunrise Channel 7 weatherman, has spent $1.95 million on his new Sutherland Shire abode. It’s a four bedroom 1980s home at Grays Point. It marks a return to shire property ownership for the celebrity as Denyer, and his then partner Belinda Morters ,were early victims of the GFC property downturn when their Jannali house, bought for $557,000 in 2003 sold in 2008 for $500,000. Not sure where Grant, his wife, Cheryl and their one-year-old baby daughter, Sailor were on the 2011 Census night, but there were 75,000 occupied dwellings plus 5,000 unoccupied in the shire. As the local paper recently noted in the shire, families typically have 1.9 children, live in a three-bedroom house and only speak English at home. The 2011 census of population and housing released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics noted 80% of Sutherland Shire residents were born in Australia, followed then by those born in the UK, NZ, Italy and South Africa. The percentage of residents claiming Australian ancestry is among the highest in Sydney among its population of about 219,000.

There are 40 suburbs, the decent residents of which are all cowering in horror at their depiction last Monday in the new Channel 10 scripted reality television series The Shire. RP Data suggests the three cheapest suburbs when it comes to property prices this year have been Jannali, Heathcote and Sutherland, all with median dwelling price around $400,000. The shire has had a $590,000 median dwelling price of $590,000 so far this year. The dearest three suburbs have been Burraneer, Yowie Bay and Lilli Pilli, with medians at $1 million or more.

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Soumershell (pictured above), the ultra-contemporary house on the shores of Gunnamatta Bay, has been the shire's highest sale this year. It was sold by longtime Cisco operative Frank Maly and wife Monica, who initially wanted $10 million on its 2007 listing. Soumershell sold for $4.95 million. The tri-level house set on 1,184 square metres with 20-metre heated lap and plunge pools, level lawns, slip rail with cradle and pontoon with poles. Inside there’s triple lock-up garage, heated limestone floors, gym and home theatre.

The shire's priciest house sale ever was $10.85 million in 2005, but it was highly intriguing. Waterview, the vast Kangaroo Point riverfront house, was sold by the macadamia pioneer Lance O'Connor to a Stargate Securities director, Allan Botros, who secured some vendor finance. Only in the shire could a former bankrupt buy the priciest Georges River pile. Just eight years earlier Botros had only $200 in his Bankstown ANZ account. The then Picnic Point-based finance broker, aka Ashraf Botros or Kiriakos Botros, blamed his dire late 1990s circumstances on a commodity transaction involving a US company that left him shortchanged by $US650,000. His bankruptcy trustee, Max Prentice, then sold his Picnic Point house for $835,000. Waterview, set on 2,680 square metres facing Bald Face Point, came with a three-level house, with a sandstone boatshed, and had held the suburb's record when previously traded in 1992 for $2.35 million.

Kangaroo Point, with just 180 houses, had recorded a $2.2 million average house price in 2004, so it is at the pointy end of prices for the shire. Title Tattle recalls by late 2007 Botros was facing bankruptcy again, this time from his other house purchase financiers, the Commonwealth Bank, and the place sold for $6 million to the founders of the cleaning company, the Glad Group's Natajle "Nick" Iloski and his wife, Ljubica or "Lucy." The Iloskis’ subsequent plans to extend their two-storey house into a three-storey house with 900-square-metre floor space was knocked back in the NSW Land & Environment Court last year.

About 170 of the 1,800 shire swelling sales this year have been above $1 million. Singer Shannon Noll and his wife, Rochelle, were one of the sellers securing $1.26 million for their five-bedroom Lilli Pilli home (pictured above) for $1.26 million. Their two-storey, American homestead-style abode had cost $1,285,000 in 2005 after Noll’s Australian Idol stardom. The former champion swimmer Ian Thorpe sold his Sutherland Shire waterfront home (pictured below) to another sporting legend, the NSW State of Origin coach Ricky Stuart, for $2.65 million earlier this year. But its sale reflects the shire’s tough selling conditions, as it sold at $250,000 less than the $2.9 million paid in 2003 for the Port Hacking waterfront.

Retired fast bowler cricketing champion Glenn McGrath couldn’t find a buyer at his desired $6 million over the past year or two, so he’s still there and the property withdrawn from sale. Ditto the Australian Cricket captain Michael Clarke, who similarly tried too to sell a few years back, while living in Bondi with Lara Bingle, another Channel 10 so-called reality show. But Clarke's moved back home to the shire with his wife, Kylie. Clarke has owned the Lilli Pilli house since 2006 when he paid $2.87 million. The former Australian Cricket captain Ricky Ponting bought his house in the shire for $3.8 million in 2004, and in 2010 the glamour couple Shane Watson and Lee Furlong joined the wave of cricketing royalty owning in the shire when they paid $3.99 million for a waterfront property at Burraneer Bay.

Just upgrading has been Paul Gallen, the Cronulla Sharks and State of Origin captain and his wife, Anne. They recently paid $1,325,000 for a Burraneer six-bedroom house overlooking Gunnamatta Bay through David Highland of Highland Property Agents. It followed the birth of their second child last year when the Gallens’ baby son Kody was born. They sold their four-bedroom Caringbah South house (pictured above) in May for $820,000 through agent Ivan Lampret, having paid $712,000 in 2007.

It’s not just sporty types who reside in the shire – as Title Tattle is aware of two studious economists. Craig James from CommSec has lived at Dolans Bay since paying $855,000 in 2001, which was an upgrade from his $645,000 Dolans Bay house with wife, Karen. He's not to be confused with Craig James the commercial painter at Taren Point. And of course the governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, Glenn Stevens, resides off the waterfront at the canal estate Sylvania Waters. The Waters is best remembered for the Donaher family, who sold out in 2003 for $2.1 million from their MacIntyre Crescent house. It took a dozen or so years locals say to get over the bitter memories of the 1992 British reality show Sylvania Waters which starred the abrasive blonde Noeline Donaher and her family. Local real estate agents suggested the suburb became more famous for its vulgarity than its views. "Noeline Donaher put people off the suburb," said one agent. "She spiced up the stereotype that it was the poor man's waterfront and it carries a stigma anyway as it was once swamp land," he suggested a few years ago.

The shire's history does pre-date reality television. Indeed Fernleigh remains an 1820s house overlooking Burraneer Bay at Caringbah. The home is believed to be the first constructed in the Sutherland area and has been an envied point of interest for almost 200 years. It was listed in 2005 through estate agent Natalie Vials, finally selling in 2006 at $1.85 million, the first time in six decades. It’s a seven-bedroom sandstone home, on 3,224 square metres with waterfront access, built for Captain Thomas Laycock, of the 98th Regiment, using convict labour to provide the hand-hewn, 50-centimetre sandstone blocks. It has "1821" carved on the stone lintel above the front door, suggesting it ranks as the oldest continuously occupied residence in the Sutherland Shire.

Its ballroom was added in 1920, and an Art Deco bathroom in the 1930s. The Alcott family, who were the most recent vendors, had bought it from Harry Peel at first sight, on a walk-in, walk-out basis, for £8,000 in 1946 after spotting it from the water. The Three Pines Boatshed, part of the original holding and now Burraneer Bay Marina, was subdivided off in the 1970s. Title Tattle seems to recall the launch of Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport, the quintessential Australian folk song of Alcott family friend Rolf Harris, was held on the front lawn.

There's even the only example of noted architect Robin Boyd's work in Sydney at Dolans Bay. Designed by the Melbourne architect Boyd in 1966, it's still inhabited by the original owners the Lyons family. Thankfully it was heritage listed on the shire's local environment plan in 2003, but only after the Lyons family had to fight a four-day Land & Environment Court hearing in 2000 to prevent unsympathetic building works next door. Boyd who died young, aged only 52 in 1971, is best remembered as being the artistic architectural conscience of the country in part  because of his commissions, but also from his influential writing critics, including The Australian Ugliness. That still exists in new forms.