The Block NZ has announced that this year’s season will be based in the Auckland beach suburb of Orewa.
It is the first time the show has moved from Auckland's inner-city suburbs to the city fringes.
OneRoof understands that the contestants will be building four new townhouses on the outskirts of the suburb, near Hatfields Beach.
Four teams that appeared on previous seasons of the show will be competing against each other and a declining housing market.
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Returning for The Block NZ: Redemption are Christchurch couple Quinn and Ben Alexandre, who appeared in Season 3 of the show; Wellington pair Stacy and Adam Middleton, who appeared in Season 8; Aucklanders Maree and James Steele, from Season 3; and Chloe Hes and Ben Speedy, also from Auckland, who lost out in Season 7.
The questions of who'll win and how much the houses will sell for will have added poignancy this season. Three's publicity highlighted that the teams were back to make money. "Audiences were devastated when these teams left with very little profit for 12 weeks of hard slog, so to celebrate the 10th season of the hit DIY show, it’s time to give them another chance. All four couples know their way around a renovation show, so which pair can redeem themselves and take out the big auction win?" the press release stated.
The teams competing for a few dollars more in The Block NZ: Redemption. Photo / Three
However, The Block NZ: Redemption teams face multiple challenges, and although none are as crippling as the Covid lockdowns that hit last season's show, they do have the potential to derail schedules and eat into profit margins.
The first concerns the build itself. Gib is in short supply in New Zealand, and host Mark Richardson told The Project earlier this month that the teams have just enough to cover their build. "There's only enough to do the job once properly but if the contestants stuff anything up, they are missing a wall. There is no extra [Gib]."
The second challenge is rising inflation. Building materials, labour and homewares cost more much now than what they did a year ago, so teams will have to careful with their budgets.
The third and biggest challenge facing the show is the rapid slowdown in the market. The houses that appeared on last season of The Block NZ sold at market peak, and were located in an inner-city suburb that was very much in demand. The record prices the teams on Season 9 attained - winners Tim and Arthur got $2.825 million at auction - are unlikely to be repeated in a declining market.
Orewa is also an unknown. It does not enjoy the same cache as the city's central suburbs, but it is still one of the few suburbs in the city to have seen value growth in the last quarter. According to the latest OneRoof-Valocity house price figures, Orewa's average property value grew 2.6% in the three months to the end of May, to $1.404m. Year on year growth is just 17.6%, but the trend line suggests the pace of growth will be slowing over the coming months.
Valocity head of valuations James Wilson: "There are lots of sub-markets in Orewa." Photo / Fiona Goodall
House prices in the beachside suburb, which was formerly known as a retirement town, have boomed in the past two years on back of the growth in the neighbouring new greenfields suburbs of Millwater and Milldale.
“The activity is not just Millwater, it’s in the traditional parts of Orewa, where places like Grand Drive and Pacific Heights started taking off in the last 20 years or so,” James Wilson, Valocity’s head of valuations told OneRoof.
“It really expanded across the last boom. To some extent, it was fuelled by the new subdivisions with people going ‘we might as well look over the hill closer to the beach.’”
Wilson said the housing type in Orewa was changing. "There are lots of sub-markets in Orewa, a lot more variation. But I would say that prices up here would not get anything like what we saw in Point Chev last year. They’ll be significantly discounted."
Harcourts Cooper & Co owner Martin Cooper, whose agencies stretch all the way to Matakana and Warkworth, disagrees, telling OneRoof that properties at the top end of the market in Orewa have performed well.
“The stuff up on the hill, with nice views over old Orewa seem relatively unaffected and desirable. People are relocating up here from other parts of the North Shore,” he said.
Cooper added that small two-bedroom single level homes on the flat, in easy walking distance of the shops and beach, were always strong performers particularly for downsizers and retirees.
“Where we have oversupply is in the middle, three bedroom older brick and tile. If it’s not well-presented, with something a bit different or architectural, it’s not selling quickly.
Cooper’s observation that buyers in this market are looking for quality should serve The Block houses – known for their modern floor plans and super-stylish décor - well.
And he gives big thumbs up to the pull of the Orewa lifestyle, with not just its own beach and estuary walks and cycle trails, but easy proximity to Wenderholm.
Orewa prices can top $3m, though.
In November last year, a pair of waterfront properties on 1922 sqm on Hibiscus Coast Highway, in Orewa sold for a record $7.8m, $1.1m more than their ratings valuation.
And in March, another four-bedroom home on Hibiscus Coast Highway fetched $3.12m, a four-bedroom home with water views on Edgewater Grove sold for $2.75m and a four-bedroom house on Maka Terrace, on the Orewa edge of Millwater, went for $2.35m.
Two of the returning contestants, can take heart at the new value of the Point Chevalier townhouse they built in Season 3.
In 2014, Maree and James Steele came second to Alex and Corban Walls when their Newell Street townhouse sold for $1.472m, yielding them a profit of $147,000. Last year, near the peak of the market, their three-bedroom house sold under the hammer today for $3.182 million.
