- The four North Shore townhouses from The Block NZ sold for a total of $5.88m.
- The sales resulted in an on-paper loss of at least $370,000 for the show’s producers.
- Warner Bros Discovery cancelled the show in 2024, leaving the producers to sell without TV benefits.
Agents have sold the last of the four Auckland townhouses that had been due to appear in The Block NZ before the reality show was axed.
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The four-bedroom homes on Beach Road, in Browns Bay, fetched a total of $5.88 million – well below the $6.25m the Block’s producers paid for the site in 2022.
That translates to an on-paper loss of $370,000 – and does not appear to include the cost of the build, the fit-out, and the marketing of the homes.
Agents say the buyers were a mix of younger and older families, and downsizers. Photo / Supplied
The Block NZ producers paid $6.25m for the site in Browns Bay, which included removing the existing house and completing the four townhouses to shell stage. Photo / Supplied
Mike Molloy, one of The Block NZ’s producers, told OneRoof that the sale prices reflected the current market, but would not comment on whether or not they had sold for a loss.
“We knew what it would be and went in [to the sale] knowing that,” he said. We’re happy that they have sold, and I’m pleased to get them off my hands. The process has been something, but we got there.”
The Block production company, Warner Bros International Television Production Aotearoa NZ, bought 850 Beach Road in April 2022 for $6.25m.
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The price included the cost of completing the homes to a shell state, ready for Block contestants to fit them out.
The company was given the green light to begin construction work on the site, even though an 11th season of the Three TV show was never officially commissioned.
However, Three’s parent company, Warner Bros Discovery, cancelled the show as part of a cost-cutting exercise that also resulted in the closure of Three’s news division, Newshub.
The producers had to finish the homes and sell them, without the benefit of television talent, contra deals with suppliers, and the massive marketing exposure the show brought.
Only two of the four teams on The Block 2022 sold their houses at auction, one making a $4000 profit and the other $100 before the show was axed by Warner Bros Discovery. Photo / Warner Bros Discovery
The four townhouses , which had slightly different floor plans, were competing with more than 30 similar townhouses in the area, agents said. Photo / Supplied
When the first of the townhouses hit the market in November, Molloy told OneRoof it was unlikely the show would be revived.
He was still unsure when OneRoof asked him again last week. “Never say never, but we live in a different world in TV. It just doesn’t have the capacity,” he said.
An auction for the first townhouse was cancelled at the end of November when Auckland Council certificate of completion paperwork was not ready in time, but Ray White agents Therese Leslie and Wendy Browne had a steady string of sales through December and January and said the prices were good for the area.
Further auctions for the final two townhouses in January were cancelled when the buyers’ pre-auction offers were accepted. “$1.5m for that sort of product is really good value,” Leslie told OneRoof.
She said it was hard to tell if the townhouses would have sold for more in a TV auction. “The people who watch TV and all that stuff, you can’t really quantify it. You never know – would The Block have done higher prices than that?”
Leslie said her buyers were also aware of the more than 30 similar four-bedroom properties listed within a 2km radius of The Block townhouses but plumped for the TV homes instead.
Buyers included a young family, two mums with teens, and a downsizing older couple. “It’s nice to have families come to the neighbourhood,” she said.
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