Fund manager Allan Fife pays $11m for 180-year-old Yass sheep farm
Veteran fund manager Allan Fife has become only the third owner in more than 180 years of Dowan Hill, a 1184-hectare grazing and cropping property on the Murrumbidgee River near Yass.
Records show a company directed by Mr Fife and his son, Ben, paid $11 million for Dowan Hill, more than double what the property last traded for when it was bought for $5 million in 2015 by Dr Raymond Burn, a Yass GP, and his wife, Ann.
It’s the second acquisition of a noteworthy rural property by Mr Fife – founder of alternative asset manager Fife Capital – in the past 12 months.
Last June, he acquired one of Tasmania’s oldest sheep farms, a 3386-hectare property known as Stonehenge in the Southern Midlands region north of Hobart, for about $25 million.
As with the purchase of Stonehenge, Mr Fife declined to comment on his purchase of Dowan Hill, which he called a “private investment”.
While best known as an investor in commercial and industrial property, and as the former head of property at Grant Samuel, Mr Fife grew up in Wagga Wagga, a regional hub where his family has deep farming, business and political roots.
The Fifes came to Australia between 1859 and 1865 to escape Ireland’s potato famine and settled in Wagga at the end of the 19th century, operating produce stores and a string of bakeries.
His father is late state and federal politician Wal Fife while his uncle Harold was also a leading figure in public life, serving as deputy mayor of Wagga twice in the 1970s.
In May, the Fife family’s Wagga Wagga sheep farm – the Gundary Aggregation spanning almost 2000 hectares – came to market with an asking price of about $30 million.
Mr Fife is only the third owner of Dowan Hill after it was settled by squatter Joseph Connell in the 1840s. It was then held for more than 170 years and seven generations by the Connell family before it was purchased by Dr Burn in 2015.
About a 30-minute drive from Yass and 50 minutes from Canberra, Dowan Hill includes two kilometres of Murrumbidgee River frontage, two creeks, a licensed bore, and 40 paddocks. There’s also a five-bedroom homestead a five-stand shearing shed, shearers’ quarters, and substantial sheep and cattle yards.
Dowan Hill is renowned as a producer of top-quality ewes and lambs, while also growing canola and wheat across 485 hectares.
The sale of Dowan Hill was brokered by David Medina of Sotheby’s International Realty. Mr Medina was unable to comment due to a non-disclosure agreement.
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