Toadie stays put on Ramsay Street if 'noice' house on Neighbours sells to an investor: Title Tattle

The home at 3 Pin Oak Court, Vermont South, in Melbourne's east goes under the hammer shortly – the first time a Neighbours house has been offered for sale publicly since the late 1990s.

For much of the last three decades, the world over has known of it via its then television small screens, as 30 Ramsay Street, home to Toadfish "Toadie'' Rebecchi.

Its downsizing vendor Faye Pierce has the four-bedroom home she built with her husband in 1973 listed for March 2 auction.

It was the third house in the nondescript cul-de-sac, but all that changed when in the mid-1980s when Faye Pierce noticed a man photographing her home, which was followed soon after by an approach the from television production powerhouse, Grundys, seeking to film at the location.

"We all thought it was a bit of fun,’’ she told the Leader Community Newspapers property reporter Melanie Gardiner this week of the initial six-month unpaid trial.

These days film crews take over the court about once a week, with all the interior scenes shot at Global Studios, Nunawading. But the $68 Neighbours tour bus keeps daily appearances given the current generation of tourists who've grown up on the show across the world.

Of course Melbourne is home to the bogan home to beat all others, 4 Lagoon Place, Patterson Lakes (pictured below).

It was the home of Kath Day-Knight her husband butcher, Kel and her daughter, Kim. It last sold in 2011 at $1.23 million. Title Tattle doesn't know if the leasing arrangement continues with the Kath & Kim production outfit, but hopefully the new owners have kept its custom valance curtains that co-ordinate nicely with the bed draping. The selling agent gushed the home was presented immaculately with its impressive interior.

"This home is not for the renovator," it was stressed. The Kath & Kim television program viewers wouldn't know it given the use of screening that blocks out the water, but the house is a waterfront."

"Spend endless days/nights enjoying the views from the outdoor entertaining area, while admiring your boat moored at your jetty allowing for direct access to Port Philip Bay," that same agent suggested.

Just why the buyer would need that parking spot for the caravan escapes Title Tattle. "Patterson Lakes is all about lifestyle and it doesn't get much better than this," the Mitchell Torre Real Estate Patterson Lakes spiel said.

It took years, one agent once told Title Tattle, for Sylvania Waters to shed its reputation from the days of the real-life 1992 soap opera Sylvania Waters with the Donaher family. It was 2003 when Laurie and Noeline Donaher packed their stubbie holders and departed Sylvania Waters for another canal-front home at Paradise Point on the Gold Coast. The couple secured $2.1 million for their five-bedroom, two-storey brick waterfront residence on MacIntyre Crescent which has not been sold since. As reality TV pioneers, Laurie and Noeline or their offspring could not leave Sylvania Waters without the cameras rolling or occasionally ever since. The couple bought the property in 1988 less its second storey for $435,000.

The Neighbours home owners are paid by producers FremantleMedia Australia, with the new buyer needing to sign a contract agreeing to keep up the garden, avoid changes to the facade without consultation, and provide access to the park at the back.

The significant fee is a closely guarded secret and will be blacked out in the Section 32 until buyers sign a confidentiality agreement, according to selling agent Mitch Palmer of Barry Plant Glen Waverley.

"Astute investors would be crazy not to have a look at it,’’ Palmer said. The court's last sale was in 2007 when Dural, NSW, couple Richard and Kathy Atkinson transferred the property into a family trust at a $630,000 valuation.

RP Data reports the year-to-date median house price in Vermont South is $650,000.

"When I wanted some trees chopped down on my front lawn, they wrote it into one of the scenes,’’ Faye Pierce, the vendor told Leader Newspapers this week.

And given the television scripts don't have Toadie moving anyway, the estate agency has plans for a portable ‘For Auction’ sign, so its not in any upcoming shots.