The Block's Bondi Beach houses from season one sold for $700,000… now they're $4MILLION 

The houses on The Block are expected to sell for close to $4million this year – a far cry from the $700,000 Bondi homes sold during the show’s first season in 2003.

But producers of the Nine reality series insist the program is still about the ‘Great Australian Dream’ of home ownership and not luxuriously overpriced properties.

Executive producer Julian Cress told TV Tonight the sale prices have crept up because of real estate trends, not because of any deliberate effort to make the show more upmarket. 

‘We always wanted it to be about people dreaming, “If I could live there, that would be my dream!” The median price when we started was probably about $400,000 and now it’s over a million,’ Mr Cress said.

Rising house prices: The houses on The Block are expected to sell for close to $4million this year – a far cry from the $700,000 Bondi homes sold during the show’s first season in 2003. Pictured: a stock photo of a young couple inspecting a home

‘So prices have come up a lot. I think a house of $3million plus is as aspirational now, as it was aspirational to want to live beside Bondi Beach [in 2003],’ he added. 

The latest season of The Block is set in Hampton, Melbourne, and Mr Cress believes the featured houses aren’t guaranteed to reach the $4million mark, even though several homes from last year did.

The 2020 season, which was filmed in the nearby coastal suburb of Brighton, saw three of the five renovated homes sell for at least $4million. 

‘If I could live there, that would be my dream!’: Producers for the Nine reality series insist the show is still focused on the ‘Great Australian Dream’ for home buyers and not on overpriced properties. Pictured: Host Scott Cam and the renovators

‘Although these houses are bigger, the prices that we’ll be quoting for them will be lower than last year’s. The Block‘s always been aspirational. It was designed to be that, even when we picked the very first building on Bondi Beach,’ said Mr Cress. 

The TV executive joked that he doesn’t expect to ever see a Block home sell for $10million unless they do the series for ‘another 17 years’.

He also stressed The Block will not be taking cues from ‘property porn’ shows like Luxe Listings Sydney, which focus exclusively on the high-end market.

Location, location: The current season of The Block is set in Hampton, Victoria, and Cress believes prices for the showcased houses might not reach the $4 million dollar mark 

Renovated houses in the first season in Bondi topped out at $750,000. The Sydney suburb now has a median house price of $3.5million to $4million.  

The houses on The Block climbed to $1million by the third season, $2million by the eighth season in 2014, and reached $4million last year. 

Mr Cress said that the series will continue renovating suburban houses typical of the ‘Australian Dream’, featuring ‘three to four bedrooms, two garages in a cul-de-sac’. 

Same show, different prices: The houses on The Block climbed to $1 million in the third season and $2 million in the eighth season before reaching $4 million last year. Producer Julian Cress says the series will continue renovating suburban houses typical of the ‘Australian Dream’