‘Madness’: Scott Cam reveals why Block homes don’t sell

The Block hosts Scott Cam and Shelley Craft didn’t hold back when asked about the ongoing trend of Block homes failing to sell at auction.

Longtime The Block co-host Shelley Craft dropped a sobering fact during a visit to the Phillip Island site of this year’s homes.

In its 20 years on-air, The Block has grown so much that the kitchen and living room areas in this season’s homes are larger than the entire apartments that contestants were tasked with renovating way back in season one.

Make no mistake: 20 seasons in, The Block is a beast, with contestants under immense pressure each season to deliver massive, perfectly styled luxury homes in a matter of months.

But they shouldn’t expect much sympathy from Block host Scott Cam, though.

“The contestants are less resilient than they were 20 years ago, 15 years ago,” Cam told news.com.au.

“There’s more expectation of it getting easier, but it’s not. It gets harder. And people aren’t ready for how hard it is.”

This year's The Block hopefuls. Scott Cam says contestants have become “less resilient” over the years.

This year’s Block takes a gamble reminiscent of 2022’s Tree Change season, in which the production decamped to a rural Victorian location for the first time. Come auction day, several teams struggled to attract buyers who were willing to pay asking prices well above any other homes sales in the local area.

Season 20 contestants will no doubt be similarly nervous as they head to their own auction day, looking for buyers who will pay top-dollar for huge, pimped-out houses on the humble backstreets of Cowes, Phillip Island, a two-hour drive south-east of Melbourne.

Cam said it was a an odd situation for a TV production, having “no control over the most important episode of the year, every year.”

And recent years have seen some of the most wildly disparate auction results in Block history, as duelling mega-rich investors Adrian Portelli and Danny Wallis have engaged in frenzied bidding wars on some properties while totally ignoring others. The result? Some Block contestants become instant millionaires, while others walk away with nothing.

Cam said too many contestants design to their own tastes.

Shelley Craft: “I think some contestants get a little bit lost.”

news.com.au asked if this season’s contestants were prepared for both outcomes.

“No, they’re not. And they’ve built accordingly – that’s the problem. There were reasons why last year houses didn’t do well: The kitchen was too small, too awkward,” said Cam.

“Or they’re built for themselves and not for sale; that’s a huge difference,” Craft added.

“In the industry, you’re either building for selling – flipping – or you’re building your family home. They’re two specific ways of renovating,” she explained.

“And I think some of the contestants get a little bit lost in the fact that there is so much amazing product available to them, they want to put everything in the one house and that’s a little bit overwhelming for a family that just wants to buy a family home.”

The site of this year's Block, an abandoned holiday resort in Phillip Island.

Cam called this trend of contestants building houses to their own specific tastes “madness”. “They’re not going to live in it,” he reasoned.

“People say, ‘Oh, you must get so many ideas for your own place’,” Craft noted.

“Yeah – we also get lots of ideas of what not to do.”

Season 20 of The Block premieres 7:30pm Monday August 12 on Nine. The writer travelled to Phillip Island as a guest of the network.