Daylesford might be a tough sell so will The Block 2025 homes find buyers?
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.
Guides for The Block homes were released earlier this year, with each of the five Daylesford properties seeking $3 million to $3.3 million.
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.
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The Block 2025 homes are located within the new Middleton Field housing estate. Picture: realestate.com.au
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PropTrack data showed Daylesford’s median house price was $820,000 in July this year, down 7.1 per cent on 2024.
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.
“As far as I’m aware, there’s only ever been one home within the township of Daylesford that ever sold for $3 million or above,” McQueen Real Estate director Kim McQueen told realestate.com.au.
WILL ANYONE EVEN BID?
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.
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.
A problem that is exacerbated by the exit of Australian billionaire Adrian Portelli.
Portelli swept The Block auctions in the 2024 Philip Island series before declaring he was done with the show and wouldn’t be back.
Portelli has since joined Channel 7 rival My Reno Rules, cementing the assertion he won’t be a contender at the 2025 The Block auctions.
Fellow long-time bidder on The Block, Danny Wallis, has also indicated he would not invest in The Block again, due to Victoria’s high land taxes on investment properties.
So, with Portelli’s money out and city dwellers not as enamoured with regional living as they were during the pandemic, who is actually going to bid?
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Adrian Portelli has left The Block. Picture: Isabel McMillan
Ms McQueen – who is selling House 5 on The Block – said the homes would likely attract older buyers who wanted to use them as a base, but who perhaps had a ‘bolthole’ in Melbourne.
“The 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,” she said.
Despite this, she admitted there were not as many of those deep-pocketed buyers looking for properties outside of the capital cities.
“There are very few buyers at the best of times with $3 million or more to spend on a property in any regional location,” Ms McQueen said.
“Now we’ve got five houses in a row with a $3 million-plus price range on them – that is not going to be easy.
“It doesn’t matter how good they are, it’s still going to be very difficult trying to find five buyers with $3 million to spend.”
IS DAYLESFORD A TOUGH SELL?
Many questioned the decision to take The Block to Daylesford, asking if it had enough attraction to bring out the buyers.
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.
Working against the series, apart from the price, is the location.
Unlike other nearby towns including Ballarat and Woodend, Daylesford is not directly connected to Melbourne by train – commuters either need to drive 30 minutes to the nearest station, or get a coach bus.
The brand new Block homes sit within the new development Middleton Field housing estate located at the town’s eastern entry point., where typical four-bedroom houses are priced between $850,000 and $1.2 million.
The 2025 contestants will be hoping for deep-pocketed buyers come auction day. Picture: Channel 9
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 – more than 2000sqms compared with a typical 800sqms.
“There aren’t any homes of the same land size within the township itself that are modern and architect designed – so they really are in a bit of an island of their own,” Mr Walton, whose agency is selling House 2, said.
He said homes outside of the township in neighbouring, rural areas were more likely to command multimillion-dollar prices – owing to them being set on acreage.
“There’s two main things that drive people to the country – it’s either affordability or space,” Mr Walton said.
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.
“Over 2000sqms is a significant amount of land for a residential home not on a farm.”
-Additional reporting by Jemimah Clegg
