The Block results: What do they mean for the housing market?

It was Team Yellow that won in the end. Amy and Stu's efforts on the show excited buyers in the auction room and viewers at home.

The sale price of $1,009,500 for their house, 27 Frances Bryer Road in Hobsonville Point, was the highest of the night.

But in the business of flipping houses, the only dollar figure that matters is how much profit you make. Amy and Stu made $69,500, $12,500 above the next placed team, Ben and Tom.

And that's what you've got to remember when you look at The Block auction results. While the sale prices do somewhat reflect what's going on in the wider Auckland housing market, they can be misleading if read wrong.

The sale prices were in line with median values in Hobsonville Point, where the average three-bedroom town house sits just below the million dollar mark.

It's been two years since market peak in Auckland, so we were from the outset unlikely to see the eye-watering figures that rocked the live final of The Block Season 5, where the winning house sold for $1.61 million and made a profit of $380,000.

The Block is, at its core, a show about house-flipping, and you can see that in the profits reaped in previous seasons.

Between 2012 and 2016, onpoint renovations in hot suburbs brought anyone who tried bountiful, sometimes crazy returns. But the boom is over, and there's fewer dollars to be made these days in that market.

To me, this year's profits seem to be about just about right for houses done up by amateur renovators and brought to market in less than four months. Yes, they were up on Block Season 6, where the profit on the winning house was just $31,000, but well down on Block seasons 1-5.

These days, flippers who want to reap bigger profits will need to resist the urge to sell as soon as the last lick of paint on their do-up has dried. Better to ride it out until the next up cycle and get some good capital growth under the belt.

There was a good amount of energy in the auction room - credit to the sales agents and auctioneers - but don't read to much into that either. Buyers can afford to take their time, and there are plenty of options for those looking in Hobsonville Point.

I'd wager the main selling points of Season 7's houses were the high-end appliances and furnishings the teams choose. Buyers in previous seasons would have been more interested in just securing the properties - in a rising market, when FOMO is strong, decor isn't such a priority.