7 hours ago
Playtime's over: Historic mansion linked to troubled childcare outfit sells for over $5 million
Historic Toorak mansion Cloyne, a place with an illustrious past and controversial near present, has sold for more than $5 million.
The five-bedroom, five-bathroom and four-car residence was built in 1926 and designed by renowned architect Harold Desbrowe Annear. It includes a luxurious outdoor pool flanked by colonnades, a porte cochere over the sweeping driveway and a ballroom accessible from the garden. Handy. The Toorak Road mansion also has a cellar, sunroom, sauna, studio and timber-panelled upstairs.
Cloyne was built for Louis Nelken, who as social legend has it, parlayed a position as a butler to the royal family into Melebrity status, marrying the daughter of an early Victorian chief justice. Their Melbourne Cup eve parties were frequently attended by the Baillieus, Horderns et al and kept 'The Life of Melbourne' column in The Argus, a CBD forebear, busy over many a year.
Jellis Craig Stonnington director Nathan Waterson was coy on the exact sale price but told CBD the home sold to a local family ahead of the planned weekend auction for a price above the $4.75 million to $5.23 million guide price. A great result for a property that has been lying vacant and needs a massive renovation.
More recently, the property was the family home of controversial childcare centre boss Darren Misquitta, who bought it for his wife and two children in 2016 before transferring it to his wife, Karina, several years later.
Misquitta was in the news recently as a director of Genius Childcare, a nationwide childcare centre chain that operated six centres in Melbourne.
In March the chain was taken over by administrators who say Misquitta and the string of 37 companies he controls owe $38 million in debts – including a $94,000 Coles grocery bill. And the Tax Office says one company, formerly known as Genius Learning, owes it more than $10 million.
But the home was not sold by Misquitta. It had been repossessed by mortgagee Oak Capital, which is controversial for different reasons. The company told CBD: 'Thank you for your enquiry. As a matter of policy, we do not comment on individual lending arrangements or enforcement matters.'
