Property developer Saville Australia has become the latest casualty of the global credit squeeze, with managing director and owner Sam Cheir losing the company’s final asset, its CBD headquarters, and his own home and luxury boat to the banks.
Mr Cheir’s repossessed Georgian-style Peppermint Grove mansion, at 52 Johnston Street, was sold by KordaMentha at a mortgagee auction for $8.5 million last weekend to recover money owed to Bank of Queensland.
Auctioneers Mack Hall and Frank Torre, from Mack Hall and Associates, said they believed the home was the highest-priced residential property ever sold under the hammer in WA.
Mr Cheir bought the property for $3.5 million in 2004.
His luxury 25-metre cruiser, a Sunseeker Predator 82 for which he is believed to have paid about $7 million several years ago, has been repossessed by a finance company and is also up for sale.
KordaMentha, which was appointed to Saville’s parent, Mr Cheir’s Saville Property Group, in May, has put Saville Australia’s headquarters at 249 Adelaide Terrace on the market through Knight Frank’s John Corbett.
Mr Corbett said Saville had proposed to build a 26-level, mixed-use high rise development over the site, currently occupied by a two-level office building, but the development application expired last year. The site will be sold by tender under instructions from Bank of Queensland.
The sale will complete the demise of the once high-flying Saville. All of its development projects, with the exception of Palazzo Mindarie at Mindarie Keys, are now in the hands of receivers from KordaMentha, Taylor Woodings or PBB.
Saville’s portfolio once included a joint venture with failed financier Babcock & Brown over the $1.3 billion Capital Square residential project on the one-hectare former Emu Brewery site on Mounts Bay Road. However, the plan foundered and the site was put on the market.
The failure of several other projects followed, including the cancelled $185 million Altus residential apartment development on Adelaide Terrace. It was sold last month by KordaMentha to a joint venture led by the Finbar Group for $10.6 million.
KordaMentha was also appointed to sell 25 unsold apartments at the completed Saffron tower in the CBD, and three unsold units at the Saville-managed Excelsior in South Perth. Another managed project, Waikiki Blue, covering the proposed construction of 140 units in Safety Bay, also failed.
Saville was a major sponsor of the Wildcats but withdrew its financial support earlier this year, putting the team’s future in jeopardy.
Former director Peter Kavanagh’s association with the company ended more than a month ago and former sales and marketing director Peter Gianoli quit last year to set up Allegro Marketing.
Mr Cheir could not be contacted and is believed to be overseas.