Boomerang buyers: Meet the people that moved back to their childhood streets

They say that home is where the heart is, and for many people the street where they spent their childhood still tugs at the heartstrings.

We meet three people – and their families – who happily moved back to not only their old postcode, but the same street. Or, in one case, the exact same address. 

Snapping up her childhood home

Melbourne’s East Bentleigh is a special place for Maria Mollica, and it’s no wonder.

She and her family moved to Denver Street two years after emigrating from Italy in 1969, and it was one of the first places she felt at home.

“When I came to Australia we were getting called ‘wogs’ and stuff like that, but my best friend was an Australian a few doors up,” says Mollica. “No matter what I copped at school, I could always go back to my Aussie friend and they made me feel loved and welcome.”

At 15, she met her future husband in the suburb, before marrying him in her childhood home and then opening her own cafe four doors up from her husband’s barber shop.

“When my parents passed and I moved to Mentone for a while. I always wanted to move back to Denver Street,” says Mollica, now 60.

The first time her childhood home came up for sale, she and husband Bruno couldn’t afford it because she’d just opened her cafe.

Years later, one of Bruno’s barber shop customers mentioned in conversation that he was going through a divorce and selling the same house. After meeting the Mollicas over breakfast, he agreed to strike a deal.

That was in 2015, and the couple and two of their adult children are now renting a few streets away while they prepare to build a new house on the site.

The old house where Maria, her four sisters and her parents lived for many years is still there, but will soon be demolished. But they’ll keep everything else they can, including a fig tree her father planted in the 1970s.

She believes her parents, who passed away within about a year of each other a decade ago, “would be very happy that I’m going back to my roots”.

Still plenty of street appeal

Kim O’Hanlon didn’t necessarily go looking for a house to buy in the street she grew up in.

If anything she was a little hesitant when a lovely house in Hammond Street, Ringwood popped up for sale in 2014.

At the time she and her English husband, who she’d met on a sailing tour of Croatia during a three-year stint in the UK, were expecting their first child. Suddenly, the Camberwell apartment they’d been renting for five years – with three sets of stairs – wasn’t quite so appealing, and time was running out.

They placed a bid, and found themselves the owners of their first home – about six doors down from Kim’s parents.

“Aaron said that my dad [who has since passed away] actually shed a bit of a tear when we were successful at the auction. I missed it, probably with all the excitement,” she says.

“It was definitely nice to think that they would be within walking distance. Those first few months really I guess it was quite surreal – just being able to step out my front door and walk down from my home, to what used to be my home for 20-odd years.”

Hello (again) Sunshine

Symone Hatty likes the street she grew up in so much that she’s bought not just one, but two properties on the street.

She bought the first house when she was 25 and still living with her parents in McIntosh Street, Sunshine. But she and her ex-partner sold that place after a couple of years.

This March, after many years of living in Sunshine West, Symone and her partner Vin Sainato, and their three-year-old son Jack, happily moved into the street after buying their house from an elderly woman they’d known for many years.

“We’d always liked this house,” she says. “The old Italian lady who used to live here said she’d like us to have it and for Jack.”

The couple say it’s a tight little community, and their situation is not unique in the street, with several people choosing to move back.

“It’s just got a homely feel and we’ve got Symone’s parents and they always pop in. And Jack’s always down there and he scoots around on his bike,” says Vin Sainato.

“We’re happy we’ve moved back here because it holds a lot of good memories I suppose, and it’s a place where Jack can grow up in a good environment, in a nice street.”