The Block winners make $1.27 million profit as all five houses sell
Queensland best friends Courtney Kain and Sevilay Keser have won the 2026 season of reality renovation TV show The Block after their house soared $1.27 million above its reserve at auction.
The winning home at 9 Mackillop Place, Mount Eliza sold for $4.72 million to a couple buying a weekender, on a day when all five houses sold, in defiance of Melbourne’s weak property market.
The besties will also pocket the $100,000 winner’s cheque, as well as a new prize called “Scotty’s Prize Pool” featuring a collection of cash, vehicles, luxury items, and home upgrades valued collectively at about $500,000. The Block airs on Nine, owner of this masthead.
In stark contrast to last year’s series in Daylesford, where the top premium was $420,000 and two homes failed to sell, all Mount Eliza homes sold well above their $3.45 million reserves. Even the fifth-placed couple made $367,000.
Sev, a 37-year-old old commercial interior designer and Courtney, 34, a construction site manager, came onto the series with renovation experience, but often had their decisions questioned by judges, such as their big spending and their choice of a house without a knockout ocean view.
“We took a lot of risks during the show, and everyone thought we were nuts when we picked House 4 over the uptown and the views,” said Courtney after the auction, with Sev adding: “Eat your words.”
“We could never imagine we’d win that sort of money … and the prize. Now we have to negotiate who gets the boat. It might be our first fight,” Sev said, laughing.
Their home was bought by couple Kevin and Rochelle, who gave only their first names, and had initially wanted to buy a weekender in Phillip Island. But with wife Rochelle being a “big fan of the Block”, they decided to take a look in Mount Eliza instead.
“We looked at a couple of other [Block houses] … but this one had everything – it was an easy decision,” Kevin said. For Rochelle, it was “the location, the two girls who had so much experience, the layout – it was perfect”.
Mount Eliza’s median house price is $1,650,000, on Domain data.
The properties were part of 574 scheduled to go to auction in Melbourne last week. By Saturday evening, Domain recorded a preliminary auction clearance rate of 56 per cent from 380 reported results throughout the week, while 73 auctions were withdrawn. Withdrawn auctions are counted as unsold properties when calculating the clearance rate.
Melbourne house prices have been plunging this year, down 6.7 per cent since their December peak.
This season was the first to air under Victoria’s new laws stipulating that all properties for sale by auction or fixed-date sale must have the vendor’s reserve price published seven days in advance. The new laws are aimed at tackling property underquoting and follow this masthead’s Bidding Blind investigation, which uncovered widespread deception facing those trying to navigate the auction market.
Victoria’s father and daughter team Rick, 64, and 32-year-old Tayla Peroomal, whose auction was last, came in second place after their house at 10 Mackillop Place sold for $4,355,000 in a rapid-fire auction which saw bids shoot up from $3.5 million to $4 million within seconds.
Presided over by The Block’s youngest-ever auctioneer, the entertaining 22-year-old Ryan King from Ash Marton Realty, the auction wrapped up swiftly.
“Scotty Cam called [King] 12 years old, and I said excuse me, shut your mouth,” said Tayla, adding: “I was excited to get $10,000, but we ended up getting $905,000.” She plans to use the money to buy a home and travel.
In contrast, House 3 couple Lisa and Rosco Wilson, who welcomed their second son only a week ago, came third following a glacial auction.
Buxton (Ballarat) auctioneer Mark Nunn worked exceptionally hard to extract the $4 million sale price for 4 Mackillop Place, which saw Block regular and IT entrepreneur Danny Wallis – who opened a trademark odd-number bid of $3,777,000.77 – compete with others in random price increments for over 45 minutes.
“I know our auction took 45 minutes – it was a long one – but you know what, there was money in the crowd. I wasn’t going to shut it off … just because it was going an extra 10 minutes, 20 minutes longer than it should have,” Nunn said after the auction.
“An auction goes as long as it needs to … and I looked Rosco and Lisa in the eye and said, I will get every dollar I can out of the buyers, and I had to live up to that promise.”
Lisa praised his persistence. “He held his tone like you wouldn’t believe – he needs a raise. I just felt tired for him,” she said. Rosco added: “The amount of work he did to get 70 cents and then it kept growing and growing – what do they say? Slow and steady wins the race.”
After the longest Block auction in history, the Wilsons pocketed $550,000 and will now use it to finish their house, which is half built.
“We’ve got no roof on it – we’ve put a bit of a hold on it,” Rosco said.
Despite kicking off the auctions, South Australian cattle station managers Jolene and Adam Wagner came fourth, pocketing a still-hefty profit of $455,000.
Their house at 2 Mackillop Place set a strong tone for the day, opening with a $3.5 million bid and quickly jumping to $3.7 million, before auctioneer Damien Cooley called it at $3,905,000.
“To come out with that … that’s a great outcome. Ridiculous, 450 grand?” said Adam following the auction.
“It gives us an option to not have to go away and work remote for a little while. It means we can stay close to our families and kids, and hopefully renovate our house,” Jolene added.
Gym-loving couple Chantel Green and Wyatt Randall came in fifth place following the lowest opening bid of $3.3 million. However, the offers climbed quickly after that, with Wallis bidding against buyer’s agent Frank Valentic of Advantage Property Consulting and another party.
House 2 at 3 Mackillop Place sold for $3,817,000, netting the couple $367,000.
Chantel said she was relieved the day was over.
“We weren’t expecting to sell today. You just never know if they’re going to go or not, and to have a 100 per cent sell rate is just insane,” she said.
While the houses were meant to be auctioned in numerical order, that changed on the morning of the auction, so Courtney and Sev’s House 4 was auctioned second, and Chantel and Wyatt’s House 2 was auctioned fourth.
“Our real estate agent said the other houses had more bidders so hopefully some more of them will come down to our house. In the end, it was definitely better to do it that way,” Chantel said, with Wyatt adding the party who purchased their house had missed out on a couple before theirs.
“I think we had two or three registered, but there was more that had expressed interest but registered for other houses,” he said.
The couple were the only team who expressed reservations about Victoria’s new reserve price laws, which were introduced on October 16.
“We were definitely a bit worried about the new laws … because knowing what a house’s reserve is, you don’t want to spend more than that if you know you can get it for that,” Wyatt said.
“Whereas these houses, they cost almost $6 million to make [so] you would expect the reserves to be around four. So not knowing what a reserve is, bidding could have started at $4 million.”
They were happy with their prize nonetheless, and plan to put it towards a home.
After last year’s season, co-hosts Scotty Cam and Shelley Craft said they were worried the houses wouldn’t sell.
“The Victorian market is diabolical – interest rates have gone up, there’s not a lot of confidence,” Cam said. “The interesting thing is the clearance rate across auction is 50 per cent and we had 100 per cent here today, which just shows our product is fantastic, people love it, it has enormous depreciation value.”
Craft said the whole country – “if not the whole world” – was looking at Victoria’s new reserve disclosure laws to see how they would go.
She then added she was happy to see “actual families who will be living in [the houses] today”.
“We’ve had a few years of investors, and it’s wonderful to know there will be a new neighbourhood created here at Mackillop Place.” Only one investor bought a house, Cam said.
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