China’s $200 million property agent reveals next Sydney suburbs to excite mega-rich migrants
Chinese super-agent Monika Tu inspects a $20m property at Vaucluse. Picture: John Fotiadis
FAST-RISING Sydney property agent Monika Tu, who specialises in selling to mega-rich Chinese, has revealed that north shore suburbs like Castlecrag, Cammeray and Wahroonga are the “undiscovered treasures” beeping on her radar.
Tu, the Chinese-born business brain behind Black Diamondz Property Concierge, began selling real estate just over five years ago but expects to move $200 million worth of luxury Sydney homes this year.While the harbourside mansions of Mosman, Vaucluse and Point Piper remain highly desirable to her elite Chinese customers, she believes her marketing team now has the ability to develop new property hot spots.“We can actually take people to an area and create,’’ she told me, from her office in World Square near Chinatown. “For example Beauty Point (near Mossman) was unknown to Chinese. I sold, in the last couple of years, six properties in just two streets.’’
One home, in Bay Street, went for $12.8 million, which she said was a record for a non-waterfront property in the area, while a property in Castlecrag recently fetched more than $7 million.
“At the moment we have some big record sales in Castlecrag — we can make that area desirable,’’ said Tu, who focuses on properties “from $5 million to $50 million”.
“We can discover different areas — Cammeray is a beautiful area but it is still undiscovered by Chinese.’’
Sydney’s eastern suburbs, including Rose Bay and Bellevue Hill, remain the top pick among Chinese with more than $10 million to spend, but Tu lists Upper North Shore suburbs such as Pymble, Killara, Wahroonga and Turramurra as emerging hot spots in the $5 million to $8 million range due to their proximity to good schools. Hunters Hill, Cremorne and Neutral Bay also rate highly.
“While water views are always desirable, so are large blocks of land — even in China when you have money, you can’t have that,’’ she said.
Sold for $9.6 million: Stanhope Road, Killara.
Tu, who is fluent in five languages, moved to Melbourne 27 years ago from Shenzhen in southern China’s Guangdong province to study international trade at RMIT. She moved to Sydney in 1992, became an Australian citizen and turned a corner computer shop into an international IT accessories company, called Laser Corporation, with offices in New Zealand, Hong Kong and China.
She told me most of her Chinese customers were aged between 45 to 55, had school-aged children and came from a property development background.
“In this generation, some of these families don’t want their children to be so competitive — they want them to be able to be themselves,’’ she said. “They are different than their parents in China who may have struggled, starting from scratch. They want their children to learn how to make money out of money.’’
For Tu, building relationships with China’s high net worth individuals is a fusion of music, art and luxury-goods bling.
Last month, she threw a soiree for her fast-growing network of vendors, buyers and enablers.
Rolls-Royce, Bentley and Maserati cars ferried guests to a $28 million Vaucluse mansion on a Saturday afternoon to sip Pommery Champagne and be swooned to the strings of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.
The Sydney Dance Company put on a specially choreographed routine, while one of Australia’s most prominent painters, Charles Billich, sketched portraits of guests. Labor’s former Arts and Citizenship Minister in NSW, Virginia Judge, mingled among the 200 guests.
“People fly in from China for events like this,’’ Tu said.
Whether it be organising guided tours to the Art Gallery of NSW, intimate meetings with BlackRock hedge fund managers or a private party at Gucci’s flagship Pitt Street store, Tu is, in her words, “the facilitator”.
“When people first come, they are lost — they have luxury living in China and they think, “Oh my God, how am I going to be part of it?’,” she said.
“The most important service we provide is to guide them to be part of the community — we want to educate them with the culture.”
Tu is one of two agents to have recently scored the listing to sell the Point Piper home of ex-Philip Morris boss William Webb, which she expects to fetch more than $45 million.
She said she has three buyers prepared to pay around $35 million for the Point Piper mansion, Villa Del Mare, which one of China’s richest men, Hui Ka Yan, was ordered to sell after purchasing it without Foreign Investment Review Board approval for $39 million.
To buy an existing property, purchasers must be an Australian resident, citizen or temporary resident.
“We are careful,’’ Tu said. “We don’t want to waste our time if the right visas are not in place.”
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