The Block house that Adrian Portelli bought for $3.3m listed for $1.7m to $1.85m

One of the homes from The Block’s Phillip Island season has been listed for sale for about $1.5 million less than its purchase price, after billionaire Adrian Portelli paid $3.3 million for it in 2024 and gave it away last year.

The house at 2/113-119 Justice Road, Cowes, renovated by husband and wife Courtney McInnes and Grant Freeman, sold at auction to Portelli for $3.3 million following a competitive bidding war between IT entrepreneur Danny Wallis and cafe chain owner Jacob Najjar.

The four-bedroom house, which features two main suites, a pool, outdoor kitchen, fire pit and comes fully furnished, now has an asking price of $1.7 million to $1.85 million by its new owner.

Listing agent Camille Morris from Stockdale and Leggo Phillip Island said the home offers “a lot for your money”, and was “over-capitalised initially as part of The Block”.

“The finishes, the appliances, the furniture, the quality is probably worth more than what we listed,” she said. “But obviously Adrian did overpay, and that was prevalent in the last Block season in Daylesford – without having him around, that’s what happens [when Portelli doesn’t bid].”

Portelli, a Young Rich Lister worth $1.295 billion after founding LMCT+, an online subscription-based club offering shopping discounts and giveaways of cars and houses, ended up paying $15.03 million to buy all five houses at the TV show’s 2024 auction.

In last year’s season, which took place in Daylesford, two homes failed to sell at auction while two other homes fetched an auction premium of less than $150,000 each, a more muted result than the lucrative prices of recent years, when Portelli often bid large sums.

Ray White Phillip Island agent Yvette Tancheff, who sold House 2 to Portelli, said the first auction was very competitive.

“We had a really good auction, we had genuine buyers who were bidding hard against Adrian Portelli,” she said. “It was Block-mania.”

Weeks after purchasing all five houses, Portelli offered them, alongside $8 million in cash, as a trade promotion prize through LMCT+. The winner, however, chose the money.

The billionaire listed all five homes for sale as a compound last June, but after failing to sell, he announced he would give them away to five winners. He gave them away in November.

Stockdale and Leggo’s Morris said the house had been “extremely difficult to price” due to a lack of comparable sales.

“Our job is to use comparable sales to get to a price point… and I don’t have a big bank of comparables for this one. All we’ve got is The Block, and it was the best house and yet it didn’t win,” she said.