Palm Beach trophy home Kalua’s record-setting price revealed at $22 million

The sale price of Kalua, the Joye family’s plantation-style Palm Beach trophy home, has been officially registered at $22 million.

It consisted of two amounts, the $19 million 4,615-square-metre front block on Ocean Road plus the rear Florida Road $3 million 888-square-metre block.

Another $1.42 million was paid in stamp duty for the property, which is a five-bedroom, six-bathroom house with three-bedroom guesthouse along with studio cabana, pool and tennis court on a 5,500-square-metre dress circle block overlooking Cabbage Tree Boat Harbour.

Breaking it up into two separate prices allowed a $60,000 stamp duty saving as stamp duty on a $22 million sale would have been $1.48 million.

It represents a record price for the suburb.

Word crept out in April of its bullish sale, with the SMH suggesting a $25 million sale price and Property Observer estimating the retired car dealer Laurie Sutton and his wife, Di, paid around $23 million.

Sutton and his wife will be the 1920s beach bungalow’s third owner. It was last sold by the Hordern retailing family to the more entrepreneurial Joye family, the current vendors, for $330,000 in 1978.

It was sold by Ken Jacobs and Darren Curtis at Christies International in conjunction with LJ Hooker Palm Beach agents David Edwards and Peter Robinson.

The title inspection by Property Observer indicates that the Suttons did not take up the offer 60% vendor financing – indeed the Sutton’s have no registered mortgage at all.

"Unquestionably the most significant and coveted landholding in exclusive Palm Beach, Kalua is a beachfront sanctuary of international stature beyond compare," Jacobs said on its marketing launch.

"It is secluded amid magnificent sprawling grounds … a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity as one of the eastern seaboard’s most prestigious residential offerings," Edwards added.