Last night proved to be another rollercoaster auction day for The Block, with two couples becoming overnight millionaires while others returned home empty-handed.
Season favourites Steph and Gian were crowned this year’s winners after their house was purchased for an eye-watering $5 million.
With a reserve set of $3.35 million, the couple walked away with a record-breaking $1.65 million profit, surpassing last year’s winners Omar and OZ and their $1.586 million win.
Also taking home an extra $100,000 in prize money, the childhood sweethearts have ended up winning a grand total of 1.75 million dollars, the biggest win in Block history.
Not far behind them were Melbourne sisters Eliza and Liberty, whose house sold for $4.3 million, with a profit of $1.05 million over their reserve.
WA’s Kyle and Leslie placed third with a more ‘realistic’ profit of $130,000 when their house sold for $3.1 million.
All three houses were bought by the buyer of last year’s winning house and serial block bidder, Adrian “Mr Lambo” Portelli.
Portelli dominated the block’s auction, defeating long-time auction rival Danny Wallis after a million-dollar bidding raise resulted in the IT entrepreneur ‘letting him have it’.
In one particularly strange moment, Portelli bid against himself several times during House Fives auction, repeatedly raising the price by $100,000 despite already having the highest bid.
Portelli said he planned to raffle off his new haul of Block properties.
“I think with the three houses I bought, there is only a small percentage of Aussies who can afford something of this value. To be able to buy them and potentially give someone else a chance to win it in my promotion means a lot,” he told Channel Nine after the auction.
The season’s remaining two couples didn’t fair quite as well. South Australian blockheads Kristy and Brett sold their house for $3.035 million, leaving them with a comparatively small profit of just $65,000 for the season.
After bids failed to climb over House Two’s reserve of $2.97 million, Queenslanders Leah and Ash smartly decided to pass the property in, lest the auctioneer keep pushing and only return them a tiny profit.
Auctioneer Noel Susay said that while House Two was close to being privately sold, the couple shouldn’t expect the “crazy prices” offered up by Portelli.
“The biggest winners were both north-facing on larger blocks of land, so they have a bigger house with a bigger footprint. They also had higher reserves as well, being at least 10 – 12 per cent higher than ours (House Two),” he told Build-it.
“You can’t look at the sales prices of the block range and then really compare them to an average price of the suburb.”
“The previous record for a house in the area was only $3.015 million. These massive prices we see on the block are for promotional stunts. They aren’t buying them to live in.”
The average price for a home in Hamptons East, where this season of The Block takes place, is $1.4 million.
“The people that bid on the first houses are trying to prove to each other who’s got the most money. They’re not buying it because they love the area – it’s all for business purposes,” Mr Susay told Build-it.
“Bidding a million dollars on top of someone else, that never happens.”
There is still hope for the QLD couple to still make a decent return. Two of the three houses that were passed in during last year’s auctions eventually sold for well over their reserve, scoring their team’s respective profits of around $170,000 each.
