Natassia Halibi and Tolga Kumov. Pic Instagram.
The buyers of a North Bondi duplex that sold for a suburb record of $24m in March have been revealed as an actor and entrepreneur, who have now had to delay plans for a big reno.
Natassia Halabi was touted as the “New Queen of the East” in the Daily Telegraph last year, with her fiance, resource industry entrepreneur and corporate finance specialist Tolga Kumova, turning heads in Bondi, driving his 2-year-old daughter to daycare in a $1m Ferrari.
They’d recently moved from LA to Melbourne before ending up in Bondi, the Eastern Suburbs’ newest wealthy recruits.
They already owned an expensive property in Melbourne, but fell in love with Bondi’s Ben Buckler, so no surprise to discover the couple’s names in recent settlement documents for a Brighton Boulevard property that set the record for a single property sale in March.
Halabi and Kumova have been living in the same apartment block where Hugh Jackman has property – paying a rumoured $7500 a week.
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Natassia Halabi has featured alongside Ethan Hawke, Kaitlyn Dever ad Chris O’Donnell in recent years in shows including NCIS: Los Angeles, Pic Supplied.
Halabi, who has featured alongside Ethan Hawke, Kaitlyn Dever ad Chris O’Donnell in recent years in shows including NCIS: Los Angeles, and Kumova had initially intended to immediately transform the old duplex into a trophy home for themselves and two young children.
But with the recent tax changes in the Budget and market uncertainty, they’re putting plans to sell their current Melbourne property on hold, renting it out, and will soon be moving into the unrenovated duplex in North Bondi.
In last year’s Telegraph story, it was suggested that Halabi, who was a lawyer before becoming an actor, would be a top pick for The Real Housewives of Sydney franchise.
However the mother said she was too busy and that the show’s “not for me”.
“No, it’s absolutely not for me,” she said when asked if she would like to be cast in the show.
“I don’t know whether they are lacking personality or just think its entertaining to be mean to one another, its not for me.
The couple has delayed plans to transform the duplex into a single trophy home and will instead move into the duplex as is.
“My text message exchanges between myself and my friends is funnier.”
News Corp broke the news in April of the record sale of the Brighton Boulevard property a month earlier, but until its recent settlement the buyers had been a mystery.
Back in April, Richardson and Wrench Double Bay principal Michael Dunn, who sold it alongside his son, James Dunn, now at Sotheby’s, couldn’t discuss the purchaser.
They said simply it was a family who wanted to turn the duplex on a 475sqm block into a trophy home.
But the recent paperwork shows Halabi and Kumova paid $24,008,889 for the unrenovated property.
Records show the property, which has panoramic ocean views, was owned by in a company linked to Chow Kwok Ching, son of the late Singaporean property tycoon Chow Cho Poon.
The $24m+ sale beat the previous high of $22m paid by snack food entrepreneur Lenka Dransfield for a two-storey home on nearby Ramsgate Avenue in 2021.
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