The Block faces falling house prices – and loses a billionaire buyer
Contestants on this year’s season of reality renovation TV show, The Block, face a falling regional Victorian property market and the loss of a key potential buyer.
This year, the series moved to the popular tourist town of Daylesford – known for its mineral springs, food and art culture, including the award-winning Lake House and artist David Bromley – located 90 minutes north-west of Melbourne. The show airs on Nine, owner of this masthead.
Daylesford’s median house price fell 6.3 per cent over the year to June, reaching $820,000, according to Domain data.
The broader Hepburn Shire’s median house price fell 11.3 per cent, to $687,500, in the same period.
Domain chief of research and economics Dr Nicola Powell said the contestants will need to make “strategic decisions” about how they sell their homes in a cooling regional Victorian market.
This follows double-digit increases in house prices in 2021, she said.
“What the market did was hit into the cooling period which began in 2023, and it has escalated … we are seeing the falls accelerate and that has been consistent in 2024 and 2025,” she says.
“What we have now is the median house price in Daylesford is $820,000 … that is $100,000 lower than the record high which was mid-2022 … definitely it’s cooling.
“This is the trend that has impacted regional Victoria overall, where softer population dynamics have weighed in.”
She adds that stretched affordability has capped price growth too. “When you’re seeing consistent price increases year-on-year, no-one’s wage goes up 24 per cent in a 12-month period,” she said.
The price falls come amid a mix of headwinds, including the slowdown of the tree-change trend since the reopening of CBD offices post-lockdown, along with elevated interest rates and the Victorian government’s increase to land tax on secondary properties at the start of last year.
In a first for the show, the five pairs of contestants will build houses from scratch in a wider, master- planned project in Middleton Field, all with the same layout and size (346 square metres of living space), with only the frames completed, and set on more than 2300 square metres of land.
Each facade has differences, including cladding and pitched-versus-flat roof designs.
Powell says the challenge for contestants, whose occupations include a police officer, a dance teacher, a social media and marketing analyst, a hairdressing couple and a geologist, is to be strategic.
“It’s about creating a home that has the broadest buyer pool you could ever imagine for a home in Daylesford. So that means you do need to be attractive to owner-occupiers, to investors,” she said.
“That means the journey they’re on, their points of difference – street aspect, inclusions in the home – anything that makes the home more attractive than the other four they’re competing against, is really what’s going to set them apart.”
The Block’s Shelley Craft, who has co-hosted the show for 17 seasons, has a different perspective.
She says contestants need to decide who their buyer is, and design the house accordingly.
“Once you narrow down on their own individual market for each house, that’s when we see the properties come to life,” she said.
The annual auction day has been dominated in recent years by buyer’s advocate Frank Valentic, IT businessman Danny Wallis and entrepreneur Adrian Portelli, who last year bought all five houses on Phillip Island for $15 million.
“I want to see a family of five buy one, grandparents buying them for their family,” says co-host Scott Cam, 62, who says they’ve asked Portelli “politely” not to turn up, and “he’s agreed”.
“We’ve got the buyer’s advocates who represent those families, and they’ll be there in force.”
Portelli has announced his involvement in a new renovation show on Channel 7.
Belle Property Daylesford director Will Walton who sold the parcel of land to Nine in 2023, says having large block sizes so close to the centre of Daylesford “will certainly drive interest”.
“The main thing people are looking for here … is the amenity of the home, heating, cooling, outdoor entertaining,” he said.
But Powell offers a glimmer of hope to contestants trying to sell their homes at a profit and win the show, saying prices in the broader area surrounding Daylesford – which includes nearby Creswick and Ballan – have started to pick up more recently.
“We’ve seen back-to-back price increases in the March and June quarters, and we haven’t seen that since 2023,” she said, tipping the market to recover in this area by auction day and noting another rate cut is expected in August.
“We’ve already seen a little bit of price momentum coming back in.
“It doesn’t mean we’re expecting boom-time scenarios, but, what we will be moving away from is the deep falls we’re currently seeing.”
She added that investors tend to consider the show’s homes because of their depreciation schedules.
Powell is unsure whether the homes could reach the same heights as other properties that have sold in the area for $2 million-plus, but does note they offer buyers plenty of amenities and space.
“But I think these houses will speak for themselves. They’ve got huge backyards with lots of amenity with just about everything you’d want in a holiday house or even a permanent house – pools, spas, saunas, walk-in wine cellars, island benches for cheese boards … and you get everything inside – artwork, furniture, knives and forks.”
Belle Property’s Will Walton adds: “It will come down to how the contestants have decided to use their skills and what they’ve decided to present to the public.”
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