PHOTO: Forbes Real Estate
We are still waiting for Forbes Australia, the local offshoot of the global business magazine publisher, to announce its local editor in chief, but a separate part of the Forbes global brand has just made a big play at the top end of the trophy real estate market.
Forbes Global Property launched in 2020 and a local offshoot will launch in Australia this week. It has managed to pull in some very big names indeed. Think Bellevue Hill meets Toorak.
The local licence has been snared by a gang of four which includes Ken Jacobs, who has headed up Christie’s International Real Estate out of Double Bay in Sydney.
In December, Jacobs took little more than a week to secure about $30 million for the sale of the Bellevue Hill trophy home owned by film producer Antoinette “Popsy” Albert, of the Albert music impresario family who produced Strictly Ballroom.
Jacobs, who is an international board member of Forbes Global Property, is someone who knows the value of an international brand name, as he managed to hold the fort for the local outpost of sprawling Christie’s International Real Estate auction empire for 21 years. He will maintain links with Christie’s while working with Forbes.
Also on board is Michael Gibson, the former long-time Kay & Burton managing director. Specialty subject: Toorak mansions.
The pair are directors of Private Property Global, which has acquired the Australia Pacific licence for Forbes Global Property. Completing the team is ex-Ferrari executive Robert Fletcher and property marketer extraordinaire Tracey Atkins, journalist and founder of Goldeneye Media.
The real estate agency and magazine are planning lots of tie-ups when the latter launches mid-year. “The future of media and real estate is merging,” Jacobs told CBD.
Gibson stepped down as Kay & Burton managing director and sold his shareholding three years ago but remained as an agent. He left the agency in November.
In October, he helped to sell the most expensive house sold at auction in Australia, when Sam Gance, the owner of Chemist Warehouse, and wife Janet Roach, The Real Housewives of Melbourne reality-TV show star, dropped about $43 million on a five-bedroom, four-bathroom, six-car Toorak trophy home. The Lansell Road mansion has a cinema room, leisure centre, kitchen with a wood-fired pizza oven, chicken rotisserie and teppanyaki grill, and an adjoining service wing containing a laundry, powder room, mud room and housekeeper’s room.
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