Actor Toni Collette sells her Bronte home
The Los Angeles-based Academy Award-nominated actor Toni Collette, the star of the TV series United States of Tara, and her musician husband, David Galafassi, have sold in Bronte, just short of three years after they bought.
The Sydney property (picture above on prior sale) sold for $5.75 million the week before Christmas after an off-market listing.
With gum tree in its front yard, the very private 1,100-square-metre hillside estate has limited ocean views.
It was sold to the Dewar family from Burraneer, who have a 1920s sandstone home on a 4,500 square metre waterfront block in the Sutherland Shire.
The recently sold Bronte property was the home they bought amidst their prior property play which ended in court proceedings against the couple.
It cost $5.5 million in December 2011, so would not have covered their initial $325,000 stamp duty purchase outlay.
OntheHouse puts its estimated value rage at between $5.5 million and $6.2 million
Core Logic RP Data gives Bronte's median house price as $2.2 million, up from $1.8 million in late 2011.
The couple had decided in 2011 that rather than undertake an expensive Bronte renovation, at their then Bronte home, they’d buy elsewhere.
They quickly secured a $6 million Paddington property, but then struggled to find a buyer for their redundant unrenovated hillside Bronte house.
Their 1885 Bronte weatherboard cottage that cost $4.4 million in mid-2009 was eventually sold for $3.5 million, in a swap with buyers elsewhere in Bronte.
Property Observer is not aware of any recent Sydney acquisition by the Galafassi couple who reportedly holidayed at Port Macquarie, returning to Australia for the festive season, the Sydney Confidential column reported.
Galafassi grew up in Port Macquarie.
The entertainment industry couple probably won't be able to stay renting again in Bronte as the redundant house of media tycoon Lachlan Murdoch and his wife, model Sarah, which sold last year, through Christies International agent Ken Jacobs recently settled with the buyer emerging as the Weinstock family.
Ariram and Helen Weinstock paid $10 million with son, Simon having a 1/100th stake in the acquisition.
Collette finished recently filming Miss You Already in London alongside Drew Barrymore, in which she shaved her head to play a character with breast cancer.