Serial The Block investor buys two houses at an $840,000 discount each

Serial The Block bidder and IT entrepreneur Danny Wallis has bought the two Daylesford homes that failed to sell at auction in the finale of the last season of the reality renovation TV show for $2.15 million each, a discount of $840,000 from their reserve prices at auction last year.

The homes went to auction in October with price guides of $3 million to $3.3 million. Hannah Thetford and Candice Wood’s house at 4 Cedar Lane had an auction reserve price of $2.99 million, but its price guide had been reduced over the following months and at the time of sale was $2.59 million.

Its neighbour at 5 Cedar Lane, by Emma Shanahan and Ben Cox, has also sold, after its price guide had been reduced to $2.6 million. The Block airs on Nine, owner of this masthead.

A Nine spokesperson confirmed both the properties had sold, and that Wallis bought them for $2.15 million each.

Details of the price and buyer were first reported by the Herald Sun and will become public on settlement. Wallis has been contacted for comment.

Wallis reportedly said he watched the homes linger for months, and thought the vendor would be willing to negotiate. He plans to rent them out.

“With the new season starting, I figured they wouldn’t want old stock lying around and even at $2.6m they were a good buy,” he told the Herald Sun. The latest season of the show began this month.

Contestants on The Block each create a home over the course of the series, then pocket any cash above the property’s reserve if it sells at auction, meaning the contestants who renovated the languishing listings are not expected to make money from the sale.

Wallis, founder of IT company DWS Group, has bought homes on previous seasons of the show and is known for bidding unusual increments. He bought Robby Lippett and Mat Johnson’s home at 1 Cedar Lane last year for $3,099,999 under the hammer.

In 2022, Wallis paid $5,666,666.66 for Omar and Oz’s house in the tree-change town of Gisborne. In 2021, he bought three houses on one street in Melbourne’s suburban Hampton, and in 2020 he bought three houses in bayside Brighton. In 2019, he snapped up Mitch and Mark’s house for $3,374,000.

Five homes in its Daylesford series went to auction in the season finale in October last year and three sold on the day, but number 4 and number 5 Cedar Lane both passed in on vendor bids of $3.1 million.

After number 4 was converted to private treaty, the price was revised down to $2.9 million at the end of March, before being lowered again in June to $2.59 million.

The property was sold by Belle Property Daylesford’s selling agent Will Walton, who declined to comment on the home, its price or the buyer, but said the Daylesford market generally had started to pick up.

He highlighted a deal in nearby Wallaby Jack Road, Trentham, for a luxe home with a country kitchen for $1.9 million, and another in Daylesford for just over $1.4 million. Daylesford’s median house price is $777,500 on Domain data, down 5.2 per cent over the year to June.

“The last few weeks there have been some fantastic sales in Daylesford,” he said. “We can’t get over the number of people who have turned up to open for inspections.”

The four-bedroom home at 5 Cedar Lane passed in at the season finale, also on a vendor bid of $3.1 million, after competitive bidding took it to $2.97 million, just $20,000 short of its $2.99 million reserve.

The home has now sold for $820,000 less than its highest bid at auction.

Ray White Sunbury selling agent Aaron Hill said he was happy for contestants Emma and Ben.

He has now been involved with six listings from The Block. “This is probably the hardest one in terms of the market conditions in Victoria and Australia,” he said.

The property market has been falling this year amid interest rate rises, economic uncertainty and changes to the tax treatment of investment property in the federal budget. Melbourne’s median home value is 2.8 per cent lower than a year ago.

On Tuesday, ANZ forecast capital city property prices would fall 10.6 per cent from the peak to their trough, 14.5 per cent in Sydney and 12.8 per cent in Melbourne.