Mansion moguls: The $523m property portfolio of Sydney’s Atlassian founders

It was former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull who once earned the moniker Prince of Point Piper. But if the prestige property market is anything to go by, the reigning royals in Sydney’s exclusive harbourside suburbs are Atlassian co-founders Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar.

Farquhar smashed domestic house price records last week, spending $130 million buying Uig Lodge, a four-bedroom Scottish-style baronial castle with sweeping views of Sydney Harbour.

The mansion is the crowning jewel in an enviable property portfolio centred on Sydney’s affluent eastern suburbs. In 2017, Farquhar paid $71 million for Elaine, a sprawling Double Bay estate held by the Fairfax family for more than a century that’s been left dilapidated since the tech billionaire and his investment banker wife Kim Jackson withdrew their 2020 plans for a $30 million rebuild.

Right next door, in Point Piper, is another Fairfax jewel prised away by the Atlassian aristocrats – the 1.1-hectare Fairwater estate, bought by Cannon-Brookes in 2018 from the estate of the late Lady Mary Fairfax. With a $100 million price tag, it held the record for Australia’s most expensive house before that was shattered by Farquhar last week.

“Their acquisitions and purchases are just top quality. They’re people that delve into exceptional real estate,” Bill Malouf of Highland Property Double Bay said.

There’s an element of opportunism behind those big forays into the “jumbo” real estate market, says leading prestige property valuer Simon Feilich of Dyson Austen.

“Premium, waterfront property, in bespoke suburbs and particular enclaves very seldom become available. You’ve got to line the planets up,” he said.

Insiders in the exclusive world of luxury real estate were otherwise reluctant to comment for this article, noting the intense secrecy with which Cannon-Brookes and Farquhar conduct their property dealings.

But harbourside mansions, sprawling rural acreage and private islands aren’t easy to hide.

In August, Farquhar picked up a $10.85 million five-bedroom holiday home at Avoca Beach on the Central Coast, a stone’s throw from another $3.57 million pad he bought in the area in 2010. The move east came after Farquhar’s family outgrew a $1.6 million two-bedder in Pyrmont.

In 2018, he and Jackson spent $16.25 million on an “in between” home in Bellevue Hill while they prepared to move. Despite that purchase, the family has recently been renting nearby Barford estate from businessman Ian Joye.

But Farquhar’s recent buys are dwarfed by his long-term business partner and fellow outspoken renewable energy advocate Cannon-Brookes, who has amassed a portfolio worth about $290 million.

While Farquhar’s habits show a preference for big, singular purchases, Cannon-Brookes tends to aggressively target desirable areas like Newport and the Southern Highlands. Feilich says the different approaches come down to a mix of opportunism – which planets are aligning when – and pure personal preference.

“In terms of the holiday homes around Newport, it’s a magnificent part of Sydney, and some of it’s undervalued compared to Mosman and the east,” he told the Herald.

Double Bay still seems to be a favourite area for Cannon-Brookes. A day after buying Fairwater, he spent a more modest $17 million on heritage-listed Verona, also in the suburb.

The tech mogul and wife Annie Cannon-Brookes have two other properties in Double Bay, the Mediterranean-style villa SeaDragon, bought for $7.05 million in 2016, and a $9 million beachside semi.

In neighbouring Woollahra, the $18 million former home of the German consul, bought in 2020, is expected to be used as office space for Annie Cannon-Brookes’ fashion label.

The couple is spoilt for choice of holiday home north of the bridge. Cannon-Brookes’ northern beaches cluster began with an $8.7 million home on Palm Beach’s Snapperman Beach, in 2013, and peaked with an area record-breaking $24.5 million acquisition of Pittwater trophy home Paloma from supermodel Jennifer Hawkins and her husband Jake Wall.

A year later, they picked up another house on the same street for $6.8 million. There’s also the rumoured $2.3 million 2020 purchase on secluded Great Mackerel Beach, the $8 million Bangalla estate on Scotland Island bought last year, and a $4.65 million pad at Coasters Retreat, accessible only by boat.

Then there’s the Southern Highlands, where the Cannon-Brookes’ own vast acreage and at least six significant properties worth about $50 million. It includes the sprawling $15 million Widgee Waa estate, the $13 million Wattle Ridge and 15-room Cooliatta Mansion in Burradoo, which boasts the largest Himalayan cedar tree in Australia.

And to top it off, Annie Cannon-Brookes also acquired Dunk Island on the Great Barrier Reef for $24.5 million this year.

Self-described “accidental billionaires” Cannon-Brookes and Farquhar, who founded Atlassian while students at the University of NSW two decades ago, soared up the rich list on the back of Atlassian’s float on the NASDAQ.

But don’t expect a multibillion-dollar fall in their net worth, triggered by Atlassian’s 67.75 per cent loss of value this year, to dampen their enthusiasm for extravagant property buys.

Dunk Island. Credit:Istock

Double Bay real estate agent Brad Pillinger said luxury real estate would always remain an attractive investment to the economic elite. Unlike stocks, harbourside mansions tend to always appreciate.

“Any person who amasses wealth wants to have property in some form as a large part of it because it’s largely immune from going backwards,” he said.

“You don’t have property crashes the way you do stock market crashes.”

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