The 2011 version of The Block, located in Melbourne has been a success for almost all those involved from channel 9, through to the local residents and let’s not forget about the all important contestants.

All I can say is, renovating looks like hard work!

For 8 weeks the contestants spent hundreds and hundreds of hours renovating their homes. Blood, sweat and tears was required to ensure each room was completed by the end of the week and that the homes were up to scratch for auction day which occurred last Saturday evening the 20th August. The final was shown on Sunday night and at the end of the great season, the Reserves were announced and the Auction begun.

First on The Block to go to auction were Josh and Jenna. With a reserve of $950,000, it was always going to be hard for them to win with a reserve set so high. The room was packed, the auctioneer was ranting and raving on the stage yet not a single person made a reasonable bid. A vendor bid was made at $900,000 and the property was shortly passed in after that. You would be happy to know that after a few days of negotiating they finally sold their property for a cool $1,000,000! This allowed them to cash in for $50,000 which I’m sure will go a long way to paying for the wedding and honeymoon (after their public engagement!)

Second on The Block were the mums Katrina and Amie. Their reserve was set at $860,000 and it seemed that every one still wasn’t in the mood to be bidding at auction. Their property was also passed in with the sale achieving later on in the night at the reserve price of $860,000. The mums unfortunately didn’t make a cent out of the 8 week exercise. I know they probably weren’t doing it just for the money but after giving up 8 weeks of their life to participate it would have been nice to walk away with something… unfortunately not!

Polly and Waz sold their home on auction night, the only couple to do so, for $865,000, only $15,000 over the reserve which allowed them to be declared the winners and walk away with the extra $100,000 cash prize! What a bonus! (if the other properties had sold on the night during the auction, they would have only placed third.)

Tania and Rod’s house also was passed in on the night of the action. It didn’t take long through for the agents to collect 5 serious buyers, of which only one attend the Saturday night auction and got them into the backyard for another mini auction. To the agent’s credit it worked! The house sold for $922,000, which was $72,000 above the reserve of $850,000 making it a good payday for Tania and Rod.

Overall I think The Block was a success and has probably once again encouraged many to start their DIY projects… unfortunately, like what happened on the block, many property renovators will lose money or come out break even. To show this in its true light Chanel 9 paid $3.6m for the 4 homes and spent $100,000 on each. Im sure there were freebees and extra labour thrown in for good cause, not to mention the interest bill on the mortgage that most people would have to pay. Even excluding all these extra items, Chanel 9 spent at least $4,000,000 on The Block including renovations only to see a $3,647,000 return. That’s a 10% loss or $333,000 in cold hard cash! Not something we want to give away.

So next time you think about doing a renovation project, just remember it’s not as easy as everyone makes it out to be and the risks are high and there is no guarantee of a rewarding ending with a greater opportunity of you making a loss.