Block winners looking for new project

The Block winners Alex and Corban Walls. Photo / Supplied by TV3

They've shouted their competitors dinner and beers and are now keen to find another building project - this time to live in themselves.

Corban and Alex Walls won the reality home-building TV show The Block when their property was sold for $1.552 million.

The Pt Chevalier home was bought by a professional couple in their late 20s-early 30s.

Despite the considerable price, the Walls told the Herald they were unsurprised with the age of their buyers.

"We wrote a bit of a marketing plan when we went on to the Block about who we thought we were building for and, yeah, it sounds like it might be them," Alex said.

The amount of sponsors' product that went in to each of the four renovated houses meant all the buyers got a bargain, Corban said.

"Sponsors introduced hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of product in to each one of those houses that's actually unaccounted for when the purchasers buy it. They all got a really good deal."

The couple said they are now taking a bit of time off after the show, but were keen to find a home to renovate or a site to build on soon.

"We are just kind of weighing up our options and see what we can afford, and obviously in Auckland it is a pretty tough market to get into.

"We don't have eye on any properties yet. We've kind of just bounced the idea around, and obviously everybody wants to own their own home, so we kind of have the same idea as everybody."

Questions from Herald readers included whether it was fair for each property to have the same reserve, given different yards, floor areas and views.

"When we started out on The Block everyone started on the same playing field - we all had the same budgets, everything started the same," answered Corban.

"I think having the reserves the same was completely fair because there was a competition to choose the houses, and that was as much a part of the competition as anything else."

Another question was how Alex would have coped if she were in the same position as fellow contestant Quinn, who was pregnant during the show.

"It didn't show it as much on the television show, but she was very hardworking," Alex said.

"She would just be vomiting between wheel-barrowing things backwards and forwards. If that was me, I would have just been like, 'I'm going to bed'."

All four couples went out for a goodbye dinner on Sunday night, but the Walls said the friendships forged through the show would last.

"I think after spending that much time with people and getting to know them so well, you can't say that you wouldn't be friends with them," Corban said.

"We've definitely made some life-long friends so it's awesome."