• Buying a property
  • Sell your property
  • Find your local agent

    Opportunity knocks

    Here for your property journey

    News and market insights

    Property experts since 1902

    Browse

    Terms

    We bring the whole team to give you a powerful advantage

    Learn more

    That's how Ray White Phillips & Co sales agent Kenji Fukushima describes the sale of 16 Illawong Avenue, Tamarama. 

    This $8.175m sale saw his vendors sell their family home to a New York-based buyer at the exact same moment they were bidding to secure their next property, an eight-studio unit block at 140 Macpherson Street, Bronte.

    "It's very unusual to run both sides of a transaction like that at once," Mr Fukushima said. 

    "But it's exactly what the right database, the right strategy and the right negotiation can achieve when it matters most."

    The vendors had their sights set on the Bronte block, but needed the Tamarama sale to lock it in. 

    Mr Fukushima worked on both fronts simultaneously: sourcing the buyer for Illawong Avenue while positioning his vendors to compete hard at the Ray White Double Bay auction room for Macpherson Street.

    Mr Fukushima’s sellers were a family who had spent 12 months hunting for the right apartment for themselves and their teenage children, often coming close, but were held back without having had their property sold.

    Rather than market Illawong Avenue broadly, Mr Fukushima went to Ray White Phillips & Co’s database first, surfacing his hottest buyers, and then he layered in Ray White's NurtureCloud prop tech platform to make a tight list of five top buyers. He took the property to them all off-market. 

    The resulting competition produced a signed offer from a young, New York-based finance professional whose parents inspected the property on his behalf before his buyer's agent finalised terms.

    Then, straight to auction

    With the Tamarama sale almost locked away, Mr Fukushima took his vendors directly into Ray White Double Bay's auction room last Thursday for the Macpherson Street unit block, a rare eight-studio holding the vendors had bought years earlier through Ray White Double Bay's Melanie Lahoud.

    The room was packed with buyers and buyers' agents, and the vendors found themselves up against six competing bidders as the price climbed.

    "When they needed more firepower to keep bidding, we went back to the buyer's agent on the Tamarama sale, live, during the Bronte auction," Mr Fukushima said. "We worked the numbers in real time so our vendors had the extra capital behind them to keep pushing."

    That extra push was decisive. The vendors secured the Bronte block and within minutes, both contracts, the $8.175 million Tamarama sale and the Macpherson Street purchase, exchanged simultaneously.

    The four bedroom home at 16 Illawong Avenue, Tamarama commands uninterrupted views across Tamarama Beach and the coastline. The NY buyer’s parents will initially move into the four-bedroom, two-bathroom fully renovated family home in one of Sydney's most tightly held beachside enclaves until he moves back to Sydney in time. 

    “This was the double deal and I was so happy to help my longtime clients achieve their dreams. It was great working with Melanie Lahoud too, the unit specialist in the area. We definitely go the extra mile at Ray White Phillips & Co,” he said.

    Back to top