{"id":231275,"date":"2025-10-22T01:33:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T01:33:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/231275\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T01:33:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T01:33:07","slug":"not-easy-rip-off-block-price-guides-exposed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/231275\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Not easy\u2019: Rip-off Block price guides exposed"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Daylesford might be a tough sell so will The Block 2025 homes find buyers?<\/p>\n

With the dust settling on renovations and landscaping for The Block 2025, all eyes are turning towards the weekend auctions and whether each property has a shot at meeting their insane price guides.<\/p>\n

Guides for The Block homes were released earlier this year, with each of the five Daylesford properties seeking $3 million to $3.3 million.<\/p>\n

The pricetags raised eyebrows at the time given each one was about four times the median house price for Daylesford, the Victorian town where the 2025 season has been staged.<\/p>\n

MORE: $8m pay out: Portelli\u2019s major Block flop<\/a><\/p>\n

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The Block 2025 homes are located within the new Middleton Field housing estate. Picture: realestate.com.au<\/p>\n

MORE: X-rated move Block stars make for attention<\/a><\/p>\n

PropTrack data showed Daylesford\u2019s median house price was $820,000 in July this year, down 7.1 per cent on 2024.<\/p>\n

Not only were the price guides exorbitantly high compared to other homes in the region, local real estate agents revealed any sale in the vicinity of $3 million to $3.3 million would immediately break records.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs far as I\u2019m aware, there\u2019s only ever been one home within the township of Daylesford that ever sold for $3 million or above,\u201d McQueen Real Estate director Kim McQueen told realestate.com.au<\/a>.<\/p>\n

WILL ANYONE EVEN BID?<\/p>\n

The Daylesford property holding that record, at 88 West Street, sold in March 2021 for $3 million off the back of booming interest in the regions during the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

With that era well and truly gone, The Block contestants may struggle to generate interest in their own properties at an even higher price point.<\/p>\n

A problem that is exacerbated by the exit of Australian billionaire Adrian Portelli.<\/p>\n

Portelli swept The Block auctions in the 2024 Philip Island series before declaring he was done with the show and wouldn\u2019t be back.<\/p>\n

Portelli has since joined Channel 7 rival My Reno Rules, cementing the assertion he won\u2019t be a contender at the 2025 The Block auctions.<\/p>\n

Fellow long-time bidder on The Block, Danny Wallis, has also indicated he would not invest in The Block again, due to Victoria\u2019s high land taxes on investment properties.<\/p>\n

So, with Portelli\u2019s money out and city dwellers not as enamoured with regional living as they were during the pandemic, who is actually going to bid?<\/p>\n

MORE: Experts slam Portelli: Block is a dud investment<\/a><\/p>\n

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Adrian Portelli has left The Block. Picture: Isabel McMillan<\/p>\n

Ms McQueen \u2013 who is selling House 5 on The Block \u2013 said the homes would likely attract older buyers who wanted to use them as a base, but who perhaps had a \u2018bolthole\u2019 in Melbourne.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe other thing is that they come with a huge depreciation schedules, and I know from an accounting and tax point of view, that is very attractive to a lot of our high-end buyers,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Despite this, she admitted there were not as many of those deep-pocketed buyers looking for properties outside of the capital cities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are very few buyers at the best of times with $3 million or more to spend on a property in any regional location,\u201d Ms McQueen said.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow we\u2019ve got five houses in a row with a $3 million-plus price range on them \u2013 that is not going to be easy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter how good they are, it\u2019s still going to be very difficult trying to find five buyers with $3 million to spend.\u201d<\/p>\n

IS DAYLESFORD A TOUGH SELL?<\/p>\n

Many questioned the decision to take The Block to Daylesford, asking if it had enough attraction to bring out the buyers.<\/p>\n

While season 2025 of The Block has remained a ratings winner with audiences at home despite a lack of drama between contestants, success must also be measured by the auctions.<\/p>\n

Working against the series, apart from the price, is the location.<\/p>\n

Unlike other nearby towns including Ballarat and Woodend, Daylesford is not directly connected to Melbourne by train \u2013 commuters either need to drive 30 minutes to the nearest station, or get a coach bus.<\/p>\n

The brand new Block homes sit within the new development Middleton Field housing estate located at the town\u2019s eastern entry point., where typical four-bedroom houses are priced between $850,000 and $1.2 million.<\/p>\n

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The 2025 contestants will be hoping for deep-pocketed buyers come auction day. Picture: Channel 9<\/p>\n

Belle Property Daylesford director Will Walton said though The Block homes were more than double the price of the most expensive properties in the development, they were on much larger parcels of land \u2013 more than 2000sqms compared with a typical 800sqms.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere aren\u2019t any homes of the same land size within the township itself that are modern and architect designed \u2013 so they really are in a bit of an island of their own,\u201d Mr Walton, whose agency is selling House 2, said.<\/p>\n

He said homes outside of the township in neighbouring, rural areas were more likely to command multimillion-dollar prices \u2013 owing to them being set on acreage.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s two main things that drive people to the country \u2013 it\u2019s either affordability or space,\u201d Mr Walton said.<\/p>\n

Though The Block homes are neither affordable nor set on acreage, he said there would be buyers who favoured their town location with more land than neighbouring homes.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver 2000sqms is a significant amount of land for a residential home not on a farm.\u201d<\/p>\n

-Additional reporting by Jemimah Clegg<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Daylesford might be a tough sell so will The Block 2025 homes find buyers? With the dust settling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231276,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-231275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}