If you hark back to the early heady days of The Block, you can get a good picture of where the show has gone wrong and just how far distanced from ‘reality’ it is.
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It wasn’t always like this.
There was a time when reality TV show The Block mirrored, yes, reality. But that was a long time ago.
The 2025 season of the show, and the way it went out with a whimper rather than a bang, appears to be more about TV greed, than illustrating what is really happening out there in the real world of real estate.
After 2024’s series went all out with its own overripe take on Married At First Sight’s bogan blow-ups on steroids – and jumped the proverbial shark in the process – the big question was what would come next.
RELATED: Shock results from The Block auctions
The Daylesford house of The Block contestants Han and Can has hit the market as a regular listing after passing in at auction. NSW real estate.
This time the show’s producers set sky high reserve prices for the homes prior to auction, in their highly ambitious yet terribly misguided quest for TV (ratings) gold.
But those sale prices were so far-fetched, and the auctions so riddled with questionable antics, that it’s all blown up in Channel 9’s face.
The reserve prices for the five Daylesford homes were all set at a touch under $3m.
Those gold-plated anticipated prices might have been apt for the former gold mining town at the foot of the Great Dividing Ranger about 120km northwest of Melbourne – but they were around five times the median house price in the area of $810,000, according to realestate.com.au.
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The Block 2025 auctions didn’t hit their mark. Picture: Supplied/Nine.
If we get into our DeLoreans and go back to the first season of The Block at Bondi Beach in 2003, we can see how far removed the 2025 version of the show is from then.
Those four homes on Roscoe St, just two block from the sands of one of the world’s most famous beaches, had their reserves set at $595,000. That was 13.3 per cent more than the unit median of $525,000 in Bondi Beach 22 years ago – a world away from the 2025’s reserve bump up of a whopping 270 per cent increase.
The Block is frequently accused of painting a completely unrealistic portrayal of what it takes to renovate a house.
It is now also being accused of having little idea of housing costs, housing values, and of the basics of property supply and demand.
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The Bondi Beach home of the first series of The Block.
Season one winners Fiona Mills & Adam Thorn.
And it’s far more than a cost of living thing, even inflation hasn’t risen by 270 per cent lately.
At the end of the day, the proof of the auction is in the buying and on that front, The Block season 21 this year, failed.
In 2003, all of the four renovated units on Roscoe St sold with Adam and Fiona winning the day with the $751,000 of their ground floor unit, a profit of $156,000 – 26 per cent more than the reserve.
Paul and Kylie’s upstairs flat sold for $747,000, Warren and Gavin’s refurbished home went for $670,000 and Phil and Amity’s home went for $655,000 under the hammer.
This year, two of the houses were passed in at auction, one without a single bid.
The winner’s Britt and Taz sold their home for $3.41m, a profit of $420,000 or 14 per cent – almost half that of 22 years before.
MORE: Block couple break silence on auction disaster
AUGUST 17, 2003: Crowd in Roscoe Street, Bondi Beach as final two units featured in TV show “The Block” auctioned off 17/08/03. Pic Noel Kessel
Things weren’t as crazy back then. Pic James Knowler. NSW / Housing / Real Estate
Of course, property values across most of the country have risen significantly since The Block first kicked off – the median unit price in Bondi Beach is now $1.423m, according to realestate.com.au.
Buyers and sellers in Bondi Beach understand this and are meeting on price, as last week’s 75 per cent clearance auction rate indicates.
Sadly that’s something The Block in its scorched earth quest for ratings or else, doesn’t seem to understand.
And when that’s the case, it’s often the vendors or the makers of the TV show, that lose out.
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