Don’t get carried away with the hype!

Do you remember the old version of the Channel Nine Show ‘The Block’ with a series filmed in both Bondi and in Manly? Well, a recent article in the Daily Telegraph took a look at what happened to the sale prices of all the renovated apartments in the years since – and it’s not good news.

It’s been seven years since the first apartments were sold in Bondi and six years since the Manly Block went under the hammer. Since then all but one of the eight apartments have been up for resale. Two were sold with a lower price tag, one broke even and four others just scraped over the amount for which they were bought previously. Just last year, ‘apartment 4’ in the Manly series was sold for $800,000 – the exact price tag that it achieved during the program finale in 2004.

The Block was a financial bonanza for Channel Nine but the same can’t be said for the people who bought the apartments. It’s an important reminder not to get carried away with the hype, particularly in an auction environment, and to ensure you purchase the right type of property in a particular suburb to give you above average capital growth.

Don't make the mistake of paying too much and then having to wait seven or more years for the market to catch up with your inflated purchase price. If you want the same or better representation than the seller then you need to engage the services of a skilled, experienced buyers agent.