CANBERRA, (Reuters) – A $30 million mansion overlooking Sydney’s harbour that was illegally bought by a Chinese-controlled company has been sold to an Australian citizen, Australian Treasurer Joe Hockey said yesterday.
The sale of Villa del Mare, a six-bedroom Mediterranean-style home in the city’s affluent Point Piper suburb, was ordered by Hockey earlier this year as part of a crackdown on illegal buying by foreigners blamed for helping fuel a surge in house prices.
Hockey said around 100 other similar cases were being looked into.
The property was found to have been bought illegally for A$39 million ($31 million) last November by Golden Fast Foods Pty, a firm owned by Hong Kong-listed Evergrande Real Estate Group through a string of shell companies in Australia, Hong Kong and British Virgin Islands.
“The property that has been reported has been re-sold to an Australian citizen, and we are investigating around 100 other cases,” Hockey told Reuters in an interview. “In some cases people are disclosing their own failure to comply with the law.”
Hockey declined to identify the new owner of Villa del Mare.
Ken Jacobs, a luxury real estate broker who helped sell Villa del Mare for Christie’s International Real Estate in November was not aware the property has been sold again.
“It has not been put on the market, nobody has been shown the property, as far as I know.”
Property prices, particularly in Sydney, Australia’s most populous city, have risen sharply, fuelled by record low interest rates, strong investor appetite and limited supply of housing stock after years of under-investment.
Sydney house prices have jumped 15 percent in the past 12 months, according to property monitoring group CoreLogic.
Australia limits foreigners to buying new residential properties, but a parliamentary inquiry last year found widespread abuse of the system.
To cool property prices, the government in February said it would charge fees to foreign nationals buying homes and fine those breaking foreign investment laws.
Evergrande, the fourth-largest property developer in China by sales, is owned by Hui Ka Yan, China’s 15th richest man with a net wealth of around $6.4 billion, according to Forbes.
