Mehajer's desperate property firesale: 'Only Salim can save us'

WITH creditors snapping at their heels, the family business bank accounts dwindling and several of the their properties either up for sale or already sold, the Mehajer family is in trouble — and only Salim can save them.

Salim Mehajer’s father Mohamad has turned to the controversial clan’s trusted longtime real estate agent “Uncle” Joe Salah to oversee a fire sale to try to keep his son out of jail and satisfy bankruptcy creditors.

Mr Salah said Salim’s desperate dad had said of his son: “The creditors are after him. I’m worried he’s going to have to sell everything.”

Mr Salah said Mohamad, who faced court himself two years ago over a $10 million tax bill, wanted the 31-year-old property developer to remain out of jail because he was “the brain that can save them — he’s the head of the family”.

The family has already sold two properties and a third was withdrawn from auction at the last minute last week.

Now Mr Salah said Mohamad was worried that the family home in Oleander Ave, Lidcombe, where he and Salim’s mother Amal live, may also have to be sold. “They’re worried that they may not have a roof over their head,” Mr Salah said.

Salim, who is the disgraced former Auburn deputy mayor, was released from jail last month after stumping up bail of $200,000 to await car crash fraud charges to be heard in court.

Creditors are also pursuing two of his companies for almost $100 million. The businesses have just $32,000 in the bank.

His appeal against bankruptcy over a $200,000 debt is scheduled to be heard next month, as is his sentencing for electoral fraud.

Mr Salah sold Mohamad the family’s first home, a modest four-bedroom weatherboard house on a 386sqm block at 107 Frances St, Lidcombe, 35 years ago for $53,500. They resold it for $150,000 in 1997.

The house is in the same street that Salim controversially shut down for his million-dollar lavish wedding in 2015 and where he built his luxury home.

The palatial home at No. 14 — with 56 surveillance cameras, a 13-car garage, built-in solarium and an aquarium — is currently rented out for $3450 a week to help pay his many debts.

And the family’s investment property next door at No. 16 is up for sale with another agent, its price slashed from $1.65 million to $1.5 million but there’s still no buyer.

The Mehajars did find a buyer at the auction of the butcher and gift shop at 84 Auburn Rd, Auburn, two weeks ago, owned by his sister Khadijeh.

Salah said it was Salim who was calling the shots at the auction, which attracted just three registered parties and the property passed in.

“The highest bid was $2 million, but Salim was saying the price was $2.5 million,” Salah said.

When Salah got the buyer up to $2.1 million, he said he’d turned to Salim, who’d told the frustrated agent: “No, no, no.”

He got the buyer up by another $50,000, but still, Salim was holding out. I said to the buyer ‘another $25,000 is not big money’ and she agreed.

“Salim said for me to get his sister to sign the contract, and the sister came and signed.”

He said the $2.175 million he achieved was “top dollar” in the current market.

Salah had several buyers interested in the 1970s investment property at 555 Lyons Rd West, Canada Bay, owned by a Mehajer family company before it was inexplicably pulled from the market by the family the day before last Saturday’s scheduled auction.

Purchased for $1.4 million in February 2015, the Canada Bay council had rejected the DA for a two-storey mansion to capture the Parramatta River water views.

“We’d had five or six offers … $900,000, $1.5 million and $1.6 million,” Salah said.

He thought it might fetch $1.8 million.

Another property owned by the Mehajers is 1 Ann St, Lidcombe, was bought for $857,500 in 2013.

There had been an old four-bedroom house on the 416sqm block back then, but that’s since been demolished.

The land is zoned R4 High Density.

There’s also a development site in Blacktown, but it’s understood the Mehajers are keen to hang on to both.

The Sunday Telegraph sought comment from Salim Mehajer via his lawyers but had no response at the time of going to press.

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