With reserves set more than $2 million above the Daylesford median house price, there was a desperate scramble behind the scenes of The Block to ensure contestants didn’t walk away empty-handed.
While winners Britt and Taz’ house sold for $420,000 above the $2.99 million reserve, the remaining teams faced an uphill battle to draw bids with a three at the front.
Realising the seriousness of the situation, executive producer Julian Cress and host Scott Cam urged the teams to get their auctioneers to open with a vendor bid that would safeguard their houses from going under the hammer too soon.
“Today’s conversations were a little more difficult because they were about strategy, because we could see the wheels were coming off, and so I was trying to reassure them that they weren’t about to walk into a car crash where they’ve made zero money for their efforts, and that’s why we came up with the strategy of starting with the vendor bid,” Cress said of giving teams a pep talk ahead of their auctions.
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Block winners Britt and Taz’ house sold for $420,000 above the $2.99 million reserve. Picture: Channel 9.
All five teams were sent into a tailspin after learning their reserves on Friday.
Despite their best efforts to lobby for the figure to be reduced — in light of the fact the houses in Daylesford typically sell for between $810,000 and $825,000 – Channel Nine would not budge.
Cress said the reserves were out of his hands.
“I wasn’t even consulted about what I thought they should be,” he said.
“These decisions are made at a much higher level at Nine.”
It was always going to be tough sell to move so many sizeable, high-end homes in a regional area.
“I don’t think that five houses have ever been auctioned before in one single day in Daylesford,” Cress said.
“That would never have happened, and as it turns out, it still hasn’t happened.
“But I’m confident, because I know that these are beautiful homes. They’ve been really well built, and they’re in a brilliant setting, in a wonderful town.”
The Block co-creator Julian Cress. Picture: Supplied
It had been hoped that Adrian Portelli’s absence from the 2025 auction room would pave the way for more mums and dads to have a chance at buying a Block property. But with reserves set at $2.99 million, that became a difficult task.
In spite of Portelli being a no-show, Cress didn’t believe that this year’s conditions were any different or more stressful than previous years.
“Auction day for The Block for myself and for Scott Cam, there is no other day of the year that we wake up feeling actually physically ill when we go to work,” he said.
“But we both do, and it’s not because we’re worried about the ratings, because the ratings are going to be fine.
And it’s not because we’re worried we’re going to lose our jobs or that anybody’s going to do a bad job on our crew.
“We know it’s all going to go perfectly well as a TV show.
“We just worry and feel sick because we’ve become so close with the contestants over the months that we’re in production that the thought of them not making money is horrifying.”
Scott Cam on The Block in 2025. Picture: Channel 9
Despite the mixed bag of auction results, Cress insists the season is a success.
“The result wasn’t that bad,” he chided.
“We’ve got a couple of houses that we need to sell at a level that would return over 100 grand in profit to the contestants who played the game, and we’ve got a couple who made over half a million dollars. I think we need to remain calm about this.”
While acknowledging that the reserves were too high, host Scott Cam scoffed at suggestion the contestants had been set up to fail.
“They certainly weren’t fed to the sharks,” Cam said.
“Obviously because there was $3.4 million in the room on auction day [for Britt and Taz’s house].”
Cam also argued that the reserves wouldn’t have put off potential buyers because the information wasn’t shared with them before bidding got underway.
Although disappointed for Emma and Ben and Han and Can, whose properties were passed in, Cam said: “they’ve got the opportunity to be rewarded for their hard work as their houses go back on the market first thing tomorrow morning.
“We’ve got two and a half million viewers watching that show, so we’ve got plenty of potential buyers that will be aware that there’s two houses still available.”
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