Why Australia’s priciest home isn’t one of our best

Tech guru Scott Farquhar set a mind-blowing new Australian house price record when he settled on his new trophy home.

The Atlassian co-founder generally keeps something of a lower profile than his former business partner Mike Cannon-Brookes (co-owner of NRL side the Rabbitohs and NBA side Utah Jazz) but Farquhar drew headlines across the country when he splurged $130m on Uig Lodge in July last year.

And then paid in cash.

MORE: Untold secrets of Australia’s only $200m home

Uig Lodge dates back to 1900 and sits atop the richest postcode in Australia, Point Piper in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs. A locale Ex-PM Malcolm ‘Mr Harbourside Mansion’ Turnbull and mortgage guru John Symonds call home and where billionaires such as Bill Gates choose to stay when they visit Australia.

Suffice to say Point Piper, which is bordered by Sydney Harbour on three sides, is a tightly held suburb and PropTrack doesn’t have a current median house price.

It’s one of those – if you have to ask how much, you can’t afford it – type of scenarios.

Uig Lodge’s $130m price tag blew Cannon-Brookes’ harbourside pile Fairwater ($100m) out of the water as the highest price paid for an Australian home.

MORE: Bloody truth of Australia’s most expensive house

And while Farquhar will likely make plenty on the property given its location, the home itself didn’t find it’s way onto our Top 50 Homes list.

Farquhar’s choice of expensive homes has been questioned before, when he dropped around $73m on nearby Elaine, which sits next to Fairwater and is a short golf cart ride from Uig Lodge.

‘I’ve been inside the $73 million Elaine, and quite frankly — it’s ugly’ the headline on that house’s story read.

We would struggle to be that harsh on a $130m house and wouldn’t knock it back if it were offered but Uig Lodge doesn’t exactly tick the boxes for the ultimate in lifestyle living for 2023.

MORE: Dad’s simple bank, tax tricks net him $390k a year

Built in the style of a Scottish baronial castle, Uig Lodge might be perfect if the temp never troubles more than 15 degrees celsius and in the depths of winter you have servants to man the fireplaces and wolfhounds to keep you safe and sound.

But this is Australia 2024.

And in our homes, we very much want to embrace outdoor living, we want homes that flow from the front door to the pool, not ones that have us cooped up in the drawing room.

As a comparison, fellow tech guru Leon Kamenev, who founded Menulog has much more of the right idea for contemporary living. And his home features very highly on our list of the Top 50 Homes.

Kamenev spent around $70m on three lots of land in Vaucluse, another big name prestige suburb in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs and then spent two years and $30m on the build.

The result? A home for the ages, or to be more precise this age.

MORE: How dropout turned $38k salary into $43m

Pictures of Kamenev’s pad were released as part of the Master Builders Association NSW awards of 2023.

In the Excellence in State Awards, builder Pimas Gale won in the category for Housing (Residential): Contract Houses: $30 Million & Over for the home. “From the initiation of excavation to the completion of this remarkable project, the builder exhibited remarkable foresight and planning,” a note on the winning entry read.

If Farquhar wants somewhere a bit more modern to spend some time, he can always hang at Cannon-Brookes’ $24m Northern Beaches pad, which is also on our list of Top Homes and the kind of place a Scottish Lord would probably hate.

Originally published as Why Australia’s priciest home isn’t one of our best