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The sell-off of disgraced developer Jean Nassif's $1.5 billion property empire is gaining momentum.

by Yellow Van

with a rival group acquiring one of his largest and most contentious sites.

Nassif’s real estate company, Toplace, was once valued at approximately $1.5 billion before it collapsed into administration last year. Nassif fled overseas, leaving creditors owed hundreds of millions of dollars. However, recent developments suggest that as much as a third of his empire may have already changed hands, as respected developer ALAND has agreed to take over Toplace's abandoned high-rise apartment projects in Castle Hill.

ALAND is set to complete the Skyview apartment towers, which have been plagued with significant remedial issues. Over the next two years, they will also provide over 500 additional built-to-rent homes in the area. The Skyview project was previously valued at around $500 million.

“The project is currently 25 percent completed. There’s a lot of remedial work to be done to get it right, and the basement requires significant reinforcement,” said Andrew Hrsto, the owner and founder of ALAND, in an interview with *The Daily Telegraph*.

This follows news from July that Sam Kassis, founder of Kassis Homes, had acquired one of the key Castle Hill sites from Jean Nassif’s collapsed Toplace apartment development company. The site, located at the corner of Garthowen Crescent and Old Castle Hill Road, was purchased by Kassis for $54.25 million. It sits across the street from the Skyview towers.

Adjacent to the Skyview site is the Grand Reve twin-tower development project, also by Kassis Homes. The Grand Reve has been marketed as “the most prestigious development ever offered in the Hills District of Sydney.” The first stage of the project is nearing completion, with final touches like window cleaning being carried out as *The Sell* visited the site earlier this week.

Built by Dasco, one of the 4.5-star rated construction companies in the NSW government's iCIRT ratings system, the Grand Reve is designed to provide buyers with confidence in the quality of their new homes. The development will offer a 10-year structural defect insurance policy, one of the first of its kind in Sydney.

The Grand Reve comprises 185 units with 37 floor plan options, ranging from studios to one, two, and three-bedroom apartments, as well as split-level townhouses. Prices for the units range from $595,000 to $4.6 million, and sales are being handled by Adam Sparkes at McGrath Projects.