The Newcastle, Lake Macquarie and Port Stephens property market experienced some of its biggest sales on record last year and the trend has continued into 2020.
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The waterfront mansion of former Newcastle lord mayor Jeff McCloy and wife Tracey at Belmont has been sold for an undisclosed sum but the Newcastle Herald believes is was well over $4 million and the biggest ever sale on Lake Macquarie.
Port Stephens has also broke the $4 million for the first time with a luxury waterfront residence in Salamander Bay being bought by a Sydney purchaser for $4.775 million.
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Both sales came last month as Bar Beach's Stella Maris, on Memorial Drive, is believed to have joined the growing $5 million club for the city of Newcastle.
Two sales over $5.5 million for luxury residences in exclusive pockets of Bar Beach and Merewether bookended 2019 and were the highest for Newcastle since Jesmond House in The Hill's Barker Street sold for $7 million in 2008, according to Australian Property Monitors data. Only a handful of Newcastle homes have broken $5 million.
Stella Maris at 68 Memorial Drive is a landmark property, built circa 1926 and having one of the city's most recognisable facades. It has six bedrooms, four bathrooms, a bespoke kitchen and internal lift.
It was launched to the market by Mark Kentwell and Natalie Tonks, of PRD Newcastle and Lake Macquarie, in late November and was set for auction this month. While a guide was never publicised the Herald understands it was $5 million to $5.5 million.
The McCloys' Far North Queensland-inspired home at 148 Ross Street was sold through an expressions of interest campaign by LJ Hooker Belmont's Joshua O'Doherty, who reported widespread national interest before being purchased by a Lake Macquarie buyer.
The previous highest sale on Lake Macquarie, according to APM data, was $3.75 million for 27 Excelsior Parade in Carey Bay last year.
The $4.775 million off-market sale of a luxury four-bedroom, four-bathroom waterfront home at 191 Soldiers Point Road in Salamander Bay last month eclipsed any other Port Stephens sales by "more than $1 million", according to PRD Port Stephens' Dane Queenan.
"The home was far superior to any other other home in Port Stephens," Mr Queenan said. "It's huge for the area ... a really positive sale for Port Stephens."
Last year, $3.4 million and $3.5 million sales for other Soldiers Point Road homes were reported as some of the highest for the area.
According to APM data, a Boat Harbour mansion on Kingsley Drive sold for $3.65 million on 2010 and the $3.6 million sale of a home in Randall Street in 2018 was a suburb record for Salamander Bay until the latest result by far eclipsed it.
A $3.28 million sale in Iris Capital's East End development last month set a new precedence for the city, becoming Newcastle's most expensive large-format penthouse to be sold per square metre.
The off-the-plan sale by PRD Newcastle and Lake Macquarie was for a three-bedroom apartment, 155 square metres in size, and equated to $21,161 per internal square metre. It surpassed the previous record of $20,640 per internal square metre set last year with a $4.8 million sale in the same development.
