Australia’s luxury property market is hotter than ever.
Earlier this week, Mansion Global reported on the AU$80 million waterfront mansion that’s being marketed aggressively to Chinese buyers. If it changes hands at or near asking price (about $62 million), it will be Australia’s most expensive single-property sale on record.
Meanwhile, another AU$80 million sale closed away from public view. As the Daily Telegraph reports, the buyer can now be revealed — and he’s not from China.
Ukraine-born Leon Kamenev is the mystery buyer of four adjoining homes on Coolong Road in Vaucluse, one of Sydney’s most affluent suburbs.
The secretive 58-year-old Kamenev is famous in Australia as the cofounder of Menulog, the country’s largest online delivery service; it was acquired in 2015 for $687 million.
Ukrainian by birth, Kamenev fled the Soviet Union in 1990 with his wife and daughter. They landed in Sydney, where Kamenev earned a living delivering pizzas while studying English.
With an estimated net worth for AU$308 million (about $238 million), Kamenev is currently ranked as OZ’s 186th richest man by Australian Financial Review magazine.
According to the Telegraph, Kamenev is expected to raze the existing structures in favor of a single compound. However, he told AFR he has “not made a final decision at this stage." He noted that he does plan to “keep it private.”
Vaucluse properties are in great demand. In August 2015, Chinese-Australian billionaire Dr. Chau Chak Wing paid AU$70 million ($54 million) for the former mansion of businessman and media mogul James Packer — at the time, setting the record for the country’s most expensive home sale.