Brutal contrast in first two Block auction results

WARNING: Spoilers. The Block finale got off to a dramatic start, with one team breaking all records – and another earning a pittance.

The first two results at this year’s Block auctions made for a dramatic start to the season finale, with one team taking home the biggest profit in Block history – and another earning a pittance.

Season-long favourites Tom and Sarah-Jane had earned the right to pick the auction order in Sunday’s finale, and they put rivals Omar and Oz first – a move that backfired on them when the boys broke all Block records.

After all five teams were given the same reserve – $4.08m – serial Block buyer and IT multi-millionaire Danny Wallis purchased Omar and Oz’s home for $5,666,666.66.

Wallis had been locked in a bidding war with a mysterious man who arrived in a Lamborghini, greeting Omar and Oz with a hug before dropping some big bids and seemingly disappearing by the second auction.

Wallis’ win gave them a staggering profit of $1,586,666.66, instantly making them the most successful team in Block history by a huge margin. It also made them the winners of this year’s Block, taking their total winnings to $1,686,666.66.

Omar and Oz just made Block history.

The only other team to ever cross the million-dollar threshold are 2020 winners Jimmy and Tam, who scored $1.066m.

Scott Cam was flabbergasted at the incredible first auction result, announcing of the boys’ massive profit: “Someone at Channel Nine is going to lose their job.”

All eyes were then on Tom and Sarah-Jane, who fronted up to the auctions right after Omar and Oz.

It's the saddest Tom and Sarah-Jane have been all season.

Danny Wallis also purchased their property, but for the much lower price of $4,100,000.99, giving them a profit of just $20k (and ninety-nine cents) for their three months of hard labour on The Block.

It was a shocking result for a couple who Scott Cam insisted had worked hardest all season and who had seemed to have a dream run, clocking up the wins with the judges right up until their final, perfect score at landscaping week.

While Omar and Oz’s profits immediately broke Block history, Tom and Sarah-Jane’s disappointing result saw them earn the lowest profit a Block house has made since Series 9 in 2014.

“It wasn’t in our future,” a weeping Sarah-Jane said after the hammer fell. Tom said that, while he didn’t expect to make a huge amount of money on The Block, factoring in the time away from their jobs they’d be leaving with a “massive loss.”

Watching on, all the other contestants looked stricken.

“I just feel crushed without you... You didn’t deserve that. We deserved a lot more. I don’t know what’s going on,” said Scott Cam.

And from there, the rest of the auctions proceeded in a similarly chaotic fashion, with Rachel and Ryan earning a respectable profit of $169,000.50. But both Dylan and Jenny and Sharon and Ankur’s houses were passed in, as both teams were terrified of having a similar result to Tom and Sarah-Jane. It means both houses are still on the market and in need of a buyer.

These wildly disparate results come after growing concerns about exactly how much – or little – profit teams might make after this year’s mammoth Block season.

There were tense scenes earlier in the episode, as the teams’ $4.08m reserves were revealed - after each team seemed convinced they’d get reserves as low as $3.8m.

The contestants were shocked by their reserves.

“This reserve would be great if we had buyers willing to pay between 4 and 4.4, but we don’t have those buyers. There’s a lot of interest, but no interest at the 4 million mark,” contestant Rachel fumed.

But Scott Cam - who revealed this week he was in trouble with Nine after getting last season’s reserves lowered - held firm.

“Nobody has ever been happy with the reserve prices in the last 18 seasons. Last year everyone was up in arms. It was going to be a mutiny. As it turned out, everyone was wrong. The reserve prices were spot on,” he told them.

But the clearly upset contestants were not convinced, pointing out how different the property market is from 12 months ago.

Brutal.

There were even uglier scenes after Tom and Sarah-Jane revealed the auction running order, with Omar and Oz in particular fuming that they’d been selected to go first.

“I hate them straight up,” Omar said to Oz afterwards. “I can’t stand his little bald head.”

Meanwhile, there was a worrying recent precedent ahead of the finale, with The Block New Zealand’s most recent season ending in absolute disaster last month.

The winning couple netted just $NZ4000 ($A3046) in a record-low auction result for the Kiwi version of the franchise.

Thankfully, they also received $NZ100,000 in prize money for coming out on top. Fellow competitors weren’t so lucky, with the couple who came in second place making a profit of just $NZ100 ($A76) once their home sold.

Serial Block buyer Danny Wallis bought the first two homes at auction - for very different prices.

Even former Block contestants were fretting about how the auctions would play out: Kirsty Lee Akers, who raked in $301,523 on the show with husband Jesse Anderson last year, told Woman’s Day last week she had a “bad feeling” about the auctions.

“Interest rates have shot up and the market has cooled, plus everyone is saying these homes will sell for $5 million, but some of the better homes recently sold in that area [the Macedon Ranges in Victoria] only made about $2 million. That’s a huge price difference.”

For at least one team, those fears were unfounded – but for another, it’s a brutal end to their time on the what’s been show’s most gruelling season yet.