Another day, another The Block drama. However, this time, it’s centred around the 2027 season.
Last week, Scott Cam and Shelley Craft announced at the Channel Nine Upfronts (basically, the network’s annual event where it announces its major plans for the next year) that the beloved renovation show would be filming in Jacksons Hill, Sunbury, Victoria.
I was in the room, and Scott said the show was going “full Bridgerton” as contestants would be asked to convert three buildings, previously used as an asylum, into five luxury homes.
A huge challenge for the teams will be trying to preserve the building and work around all the complex heritage regulations, while battling it out as always to win the top prize.
Cue locals getting frustrated, and fans questioning why (yet again) the show decides to focus on creating multimillion homes when so many Australians are struggling for affordable housing.
Why are Sunbury locals annoyed about The Block coming to their doorstep?
Okay, so I need to caveat that most people don’t like change. And there’s this through line throughout all the gripes reality TV fans generally have.
However, Sunbury locals are frustrated because they fear it will add to road congestion, and, importantly, the historical significance of the building should be preserved for the public — not just be turned into more private luxury houses.
The site was nicknamed the Sunbury Slaughterhouse (yikes) when it was a school in the 1860s, before becoming a mental health hospital, which it remained until 1962.
It has been largely left untouched since then, but locals wish for it to be renovated and used for public use.
“Oh god dammit. This is going to be horrible for school drop-off and pick-up, as well as the disappointment that the government is selling off community assets to Channel Nine,” one local said.
“The thought of this place being turned into houses for ratings on a tv show is very upsetting. How does this benefit the community?” another said.
According to the Sunbury Asylum Alliance, the organisation submitted an application to the State Government over 13 years ago for approval to turn the buildings into a “vibrant community hub and premium tourist destination”. However, this clearly hasn’t come to fruition, and now there is a unified push to stop The Block from taking over the site.
Why does The Block continue to push multimillion dollar homes?
For several years now, fans of The Block have had one major criticism of the show — it’s out of touch with regular Australians.
This season is set in Mount Eliza in Victoria (highly sought-after real estate near Melbourne), with the ‘quiet luxury’ homes expected to sell for upwards of $5 million.
However, with the Australian Bureau of Statistics reporting that the average new owner-occupier home loan sits at around $750,000, the homes that fans are watching being renovated for weeks on end are actually very far from something that many of us can attain.
The announcement of the 2027 season has brought up the issue again, but Mark Nunn, from Buxton Real Estate, who represents Lisa and Rosco this year and worked with Britt and Taz last year, told WHO that it would be tricky to keep the audience entertained while trying to still make a decent profit if the show focused on ‘normal’ housing.
“It’s hard to build a house that’s, say, you know, in the average median house price of the Australian marketplace for a TV show,” he told WHO.
He continued, “Realistically, to try and build a house, and make a TV show out of it – because they’re also looking for what design edges they’ve got, what new innovations are coming into the market – it’s really hard to do that at, say, the median house price level.
“So I think… the way building costs have gone, The Block has naturally gone to a more of an aspirational type purchaser, more so than, you know, just build a house and sell it.”
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