First come, first served for tennis courts

Only a diehard would see an optimistic headline in that, even if Australian Property Monitors puts the suburb's clearance rate for the past year at a slightly weaker 31 per cent.

Ever since the Lehman collapse there has been a pall over the heartland suburb of our upwardly mobile merchant bankers.

Mosman has more than 5000 houses with about 240 on the harbourfront and about 60 inland with tennis courts. Either can rank among the true trophy properties.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Mosman's only weekend sale was a knockdown house with a north-south championship court on its 1860-square-metre holding.

Set within the valley of Elfrida Street, the property was sold on auction eve by Belle Property agent Tim Foote, who had been quoting $4 million-plus. Apparently one person turned up to the inspection in her tennis frock.

Reflecting about 7.3 per cent annual growth, it last traded at $1.72 million in 1997 when bought by the Berge Phillips clan, who also maintained a pool on the battleaxe block.

A tennis court doesn't guarantee a sale as was seen directly opposite where Rod Leaver, the Lend Lease chief executive for the Asia-Pacific region, has been seeking buyers for the past five months.

Leaver apparently wants $6 million or so for his house with a court on 1202 square metres. Leaver's listing is not just on a much smaller block but it comes with a mid-1990s gabled Cherrybrook-style house that isn't the typical Mosman desire.

The suburb's last tennis court and house sale was on Medusa Street where $3.35 million was paid for a six-bedroom house on 1163 square metres. It was offloaded by the veteran stockbroker Bruce Wookey, who secured annual growth of about 8.1 per cent since his purchase 15 years ago.

Mosman's top sale this year  the $13.2 million Curraweena, a 1906 Clifton Gardens residence  came with tennis court on its 2238 square metres. It last sold in 1998 for $2,725,000, reflecting 15.4 per cent annual growth. The Buena Vista Avenue property was sold by the Dollard family to London expatriate Paul Henry, who had it listed for rental at $5000 a week, at a yield which would hardly bother the scorer.

There were two tennis courts reportedly sold in 2002 which had been subdivided from a large home but the courts, which fetched $1.2 million and $1.3 million, were set to become building blocks.

From memory, it is two decades since there was actually a tennis court sold to a neighbour who then kept it as a tennis court.

The longtime stockbroker John Valder accepted $500,000 in 1989 for the Medusa Street offering. Valder, who headed to Bayview, bought the 851 square metre block in 1972 for $32,500, thereby showing an amazing 17.4 per cent annual appreciation.

That's like a 6-0, 6-0, 6-0 triumph.