The Block shock: Eye-watering price guides reveal high stakes for contestants

Price guides for The Block homes have been revealed, with each of the five Daylesford properties seeking $3 million to $3.3 million – four times the town’s median house price.

PropTrack data shows Daylesford’s median house price was $820,000 in July this year, down 7.1% on 2024.

If the homes do sell for more than $3 million, they would set a new price record for the Daylesford region, McQueen Real Estate director Kim McQueen told realestate.com.au.

“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,” Ms McQueen said.

That property at 88 West Street, sold for $3 million in March 2021, property.com.au shows. Regional markets were strong at the time thanks to city-dwellers looking for more space and freedom from COVID lockdowns.

Owned and built by a former mayor of Daylesford, the property sits on a sprawling block of 4,405sqm, more than double that of The Block homes.

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.”

Big land = big prices?

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.

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 multi-million-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.”

Who will bid?

Serial buyer on The Block for the past three seasons, Adrian ‘Lambo Guy’ Portelli has said he would not bid on The Block houses again – recently cementing that statement by joining rival show ‘My Reno Rules’ on Channel 7.

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.

Agent for House 3 Mark Nunn from Buxton Ballarat said he expected the homes to not only attract investors and downsizers – but families, too.

“I actually think there’s going to be some owner-occupiers in this market too,” Mr Nunn said.  “So people who are either in the region and want to live in a high-end house, or move to the region and buy an up-market property.”

Unlike other nearby towns including Ballarat and Woodend, Daylesford is not directly connected to Melbourne by train – commuters either need to drive 30mins to the nearest station, or get a coach bus.

Despite this, Mr Nunn said he still expected to see some tree-changers looking to bid come auction day.

“You might live there five days of the week and then commute for two or three days, there’s absolutely more and more of that trend happening right across Victoria,” he said.

Mr Walton said he had noticed more activity in the Daylesford market since The Block began filming there, particularly from first-home buyers.

“One thing that we do know in the real estate market is that when the first-home buyer market or entry-level market starts to take off, it has a very strong flow and effect to the rest of the market,” he said.

“We are looking forward to seeing what happens in the next nine weeks in the Daylesford market as a result of the attention The Block brings.”

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