The agents behind The Block’s big win

House 5 contestants Omar and Oz have taken out the top spot in this year’s season of The Block with the help of the Ray White Sunbury team.

Ray White Sunbury principals Aaron Hill and Marin Durkovic with the assistance of sales consultant Maddy Perfonowski and Chelsea Kleeven represented the Western Sydney boys’ house at 241 McGeorge Road, Gisborne. The property sold for $5,666,666.66 at an auction on Saturday, November 5. Not only was the price the highest ever paid on The Block but the boys broke the record for most prize money ever won.

Ray White has a strong history of auctioning, beginning with Ray White himself in 1902. Since then, the agency has become industry leaders in the auction process and have been dubbed the “Competition Creators”, a phrase the agency trademarked across Australia and New Zealand this year.

The agents’ ability to create competition for House 5 ensured the auction was a roaring success, attracting four registered bidders, including two Block heavy hitters. They drew “Block King” Danny Wallis, young gun businessman Adrian Portelli, Block veteran and buyer’s agent Frank Valentic and a local family.

“From day one, we sat down with the boys to do a strategy for the whole campaign and we knew from the start that it was going to be an Australian based buyer, likely with a high profile,” Mr Hill said.

“We reached out to CEOs, social media influencers and tech young guns in Australia to try and get them to come down to the house. A lot of them didn’t respond but some did, we even had Monika Tu from Luxe Listings bring buyers through.”

After meeting with Ms Tu, who brought with her Feng Shui master Xi Hai Yung, Mr Hill asked the master to bless the house in time for the upcoming auction.

But their main strategy was getting all the competition in the room together to meet Omar and Oz.

“We went through and spoke to a lot of people with deep pockets and had a lot of parties with them. We had Adrian Portelli, Danny Wallis and other buyers over for barbecues and events,” he said.

“At the launch party we invited all the biggest buyer advocates that have been on The Block before. We invited all the buyers from previous Block seasons to a party one night, there were about 120 people there – no one else did this.

“We wanted them to have face time with Omar and Oz. We tried to get them from a client level to friendship and they liked our contestants because they knew them better than the others.

“We had the boys talk to their buyers on a personal level because they aren’t just buyers to us.”

Mr Hill said they wanted as many people as possible to know about the home and the hard work the boys had put in.

“We got all the buyer advocates we had been working with in one room and had Omar and Oz tell them all about the house and why they built it the way they did and it showed them how passionate the boys were about the house,” he said.