I think it’s the same auction house. The judges might score each team’s work which would then decide the renovation order of the properties of the seven teams; the total prize fund would be revealed after interior renovation of the seven houses were completed.
Do you mean this article? All it says is “The first challenge is to flip a house in Sydney… whatever profit they make from that then becomes the prize fund for the rest of the series.”
If they don’t reveal the cash prize until later, it gives them the opportunity for literally months of “WHAT WILL BE HOUSE RULES MASSIVE PRIZE? YOU’LL NEVER BELIEVE IT! TUNE IN TO FIND OUT” promos.
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This is my guilty Aussie pleasure but since season 2 it has suffered from getting more and more bloated and then in later seasons focusing more on drama rather than renoations - for example deliberately splitting the zones across the house because they think we want to see arguments over space every week, rather than for example a Master Bedroom/Ensuite created by one team with one vision. Indeed with the walk in robe the Master Bedroom is often split between three teams.
It looks likely then with the extra team and launch week twist it’ll be a more bloated series than ever, and not happy to hear the judging will again be split over two nights. In season one it was done over about half an hour in the back half of episode 4!
That said I have always thought starting with a neutral project where all teams compete would be a good idea so at least the competitors have more of an idea about the people who own the first house.
Ratings for the judging were high but the renovation episodes were dropping off. So now there is more judging and less renovating.
reality shows often deceive things in a certain way. They could have auctioned the house after the renovations without contestants knowing the exact prize pool.
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According to Seven’s program guide for next week, the first two teams to have their homes renovated this season were Jess and Jared (Adelaide), then Mel and Dave (Gold Coast).
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What was the disclaimer at the beginning of the episode? I only saw a flash of it so I don’t know what it was about.
Something along the lines of:
This episode contained an incident (or it may have said injury) which could cause distress to some viewers.
EDIT: Found it.
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Out of interest, did Deeksy do a V/O for it?
He always does the ones for “Lifeline” et al. after whatever network program requires a billboard.
The accident involved guest judge Carolyn but she is OK now.
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Not sure, we only got the last couple of frames of it on the recording with no audio in that section.
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what happed to her??? missed that bit
I think a plank of wood fell on her.
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It’s on the show’s Twitter now if you really want to see it.
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Nah, I think I’ll pass. But thanks anyway J.
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A fractured sternum and two fractured ribs. It certainly wasn’t just a minor accident!
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Turns out the auction house is the one at Rosebery in Sydney’s south, which was first reported by News Corp back in March. According to CoreLogic, Seven bought the house in September 2017 for $1.25 million.
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The house was auctioned on March 19 this year according to realestate.com.au. It was sold for $1.605 million, meaning the profit is $355,000 which will be the prize money for the winning team this season.
In the past five seasons, the team which had its house renovated first tended to struggle in the next 2-3 renovations. The auction house was devised to ratify the problem so every team would have one renovation under its belt.
This pictured house in the article is not the auction house, was it just one they used for the purposes of the article? We did actually find out what the selling price and hence the profit was in the auction last night. The house sold for $1.605 million, which meant that the profit was $355 000 so this will be the prize money the teams are fighting for this year. Thank goodness they won’t be dragging this out as you thought they might do.
But if the auction really did only happen in March, then the producers played a bit of a trick on the viewers thinking that the auction day was soon after they got judged at Home base but what was shown was not in the order it was filmed. They just edited the auction day into the episode even though it happened months later. So the teams may not have known all season what their prize money but the viewers will be assuming they do. I suppose the only way to find out is if they actually talk about an exact prize sum figure again in these episodes to come or not. If they do, it would certainly make things quite confusing, given you are so sure it happened in March.
$355 000 is a decent sum of money to earn on a show like this, more than what was up for grabs in MKR and in addition the winners would have their entire home inside and out completely renovated so the winners should count themselves extremely lucky!!
Edit: The teams are still talking about the exact prize sum figure at the first interior renovation so I am stumped now. It doesn’t make sense that this auction happened in March now, after all the other renovations 
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Once again this year, it seems that for the judging in the first interior renovation round including for the judging of the auction house last night, the judges are not making an appearance at Home Base to deliver the scores to the teams themselves, instead it’s Joh reading them out. I hated how they did this last season and I hate how they are doing it once again, it’s so tacky. I don’t understand what may prevent the judges being there in person when I thought they started doing this in like the last season or two that Joe Snell was a judge. Would it have something to do with one of the judges, maybe not Wendy since she was able to be appear with Joe in those aforementioned series’ with Joe but Drew or LLB not being available all the time to make these studio appearances?
There’s also a new build supervisor this season; Owen. I don’t know if any were mentioned in past years since Chester Drife left.
In addition, there does not appear to be any proper opening credits or song at the start of the show this year, just a House Rules card that shows after the previews etc at the start of the show, which is extremely disappointing.