Andrew Winter on the success of Selling Houses Australia as it hits 10 years

BELIEVE it or not, Andrew Winter joined Selling Houses without an audition. A decade later, the Foxtel show has been a hit and there’s a reason why.

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TWO years into a new life in Australia, English-born Andrew Winter got the kind of phone call every aspiring celebrity dreams about.

The real estate expert, who had shifted his family to Queensland for the sunshine and property potential, had been the host of a UK television show, Selling Houses, and producers here wanted him for a local version.

“They just phoned me up one day and said ‘hello, I gather you’re now living in Australia’ and I said ‘yes’ and they said, ‘we’d like to do an Australian version [of Selling Houses], would you like to work on it’ and I said, ‘yes please’ and that was that.”

That was 10 years ago and without even auditioning, Winter took the lead on one of the most successful and popular shows Foxtel’s Lifestyle channel have ever produced.

An eccentric presenter, whose wry wit and fondness for sarcasm can polarise viewers, Winter recalls the next two parts of that original puzzle weren’t quite the right fit — at least for him, he says in jest.

Charlie Albone, Shayna Blaze and Andrew Winter celebrate a new series of Selling Houses Australia, one of the most popular shows on Foxtel. Picture: Foxtel

“Foxtel wanted to do the same [UK] format but they didn’t want to do it the same, which I thought was brilliant. They immediately tweaked it, unfortunately by getting Charlie [Albone, landscape designer] and Shaynna [Blaze, an interior design specialist] to share my limelight. In Britain, I used to host it mostly on my own, I didn’t want those two stealing my thunder.”

Of course, he jokes about the trio, which has worked — at least on air — as a team, taking on unsellable properties, making them over with a limited budget and putting themselves and their handiwork to the auction test.

Over the decade, the show has tackled everything from dilapidated farm houses, to pricey city pads in need of a polish.

Using the team’s talents, they have also reached out to needy causes, notably one family whose only real asset — their Brisbane river home — had been destroyed by the 2010 Queensland floods.

Big crowds for #SHA 100th ep auction day. Watch this March 1 only on @LifeStyleTV pic.twitter.com/2T3HKz5UGK

— Andrew Winter (@andrewtwinter) February 25, 2017

There are many moments Winter takes pride in, but his favourite was the jackpot the program helped deliver for a postman and his wife who had gone against the crowd back in the 1970s to buy a coastal cottage in South Marouba (a beachside suburb of Sydney), gambling it might deliver them a nice nest egg come retirement.

Selling Houses Australia and The Block judge Shaynna Blaze puts the finishing touches to each property. Picture: Urban Road

With just a few extensions to the property over that time, the Selling Houses Australia team got what Winter describes as the “grotty little cottage” ready for sale and stunned its owners when it sold for $3 million.

“They were able to pay off their kids’ mortgages and buy a flat for retirement and an RV [motor home]. It was an incredible story. No greed, no nothing, purely they made the right decision, at the right time,” Winter said.

While some grumble when these high-priced properties are given extra publicity, Winter points out the scope of the show has seen them work on “everything from under $200,000, up to over $4 million.”

Selling Houses Australia's resident gardener Charlie Albone at home in Ourimbahon the NSW Central Coast. Picture: Waide Maguire

He argues: “there’s no point for us to just do all cheap property, we think people should see the whole spectrum of the market.”

For those who love Winter’s banter, there’s more to come including a new season of Selling Houses and another property program which teams him with The Block judge and lifestyle star, Neale Whitaker on another local adaptation of Canadian franchise, Love It Or List It (in production now).

Watch: Selling Houses Australia, Lifestyle, Wednesday, 8.30pm

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Originally published as Andrew Winter on the success of Selling Houses Australia as it hits 10 years