Alex Birkenstock buys Eileen Bond penthouse for $20m

The Birkenstock footwear billionaire had a $200m budget to splurge on Aussie real estate last December, with the most recent being Eileen Bond’s Double Bay penthouse for $20m.

But if you were Alex Birkenstock’s shoes, why wouldn’t you?

Birkenstock, 57, reportedly has a $3bn fortune thanks to the sale of his and brother Christian’s stake in the German family’s sandal business in 2021.

Alex’s name appeared yesterday on land title documents for the harbourside dual-level four-bedroom apartment in the block of three at 9 Gladswood Gardens.

Spanning 492sqm, it offers sweeping views of Double Bay and has not changed hands in 40 years, having been owned by the late Eileen Bond — one of the wives of the late business tycoon Alan Bond — who’d bought it for $1.225m, six years before the couple divorced in 1992.

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The late Eileen Bond loved the Double Bay penthouse.

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Alex Birkenstock and his wife, former model Vanessa Cush, have no plans to move in.

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It will rent out for between $7000 and $8000 per week.

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The purchase, via his buyer’s agent Simon Cohen and sales agents Elliott Placks and Thomas Popple of Ray White Double Bay — took the Birkenstock property spend to $163m.

None of the agents were available to comment on the Birkenstock’s latest purchase.

News Corp broke the news in January of his first Sydney purchase last December — a Rose Bay waterfront mansion for $83.5m — the biggest Sydney deal of 2025 — where Alex and his wife, former model Vanessa, now reside.

The same month, he bought an $8m mansion in the Melbourne suburb of Brighton.

Then in May, news broke that he’d bought a $51.5m apartment on the 78th floor of Crown Residences in Barangaroo, on February 17, the 525sqm whole-floor residence of the late Robert Blann, Kerry Packer’s bookmaker.

Will the Birkenstocks feel the need to redecorate?

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Eileen, the first wife of the business tycoon Alan Bond, had bought it for $1.225m in 1992.

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That four-bedroom, five-bathroom apartment with four-car garage in Crown will attract strata levies of more than $140k a year, and despite it’s potential to rent out for $20k a week, it’s set to be a city bolthole for the family or visiting guests from overseas.

But sources say Birkenstock’s latest purchase is simply “a blue-chip investment”, which he’ll rent out for between $7000 and $8000 per week.

He may not even bother to renovate it — “larger than life” Red Bond’s decoration style must have appealed to the couple.

At the time of its listing, Eileen’s daughter, Perth real estate agent Jody Fewster, said her mother had spent three months of the year in the Double Bay apartment and “absolutely loved it”.

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