Three houses being renovated on TV One's Our First Home won't go anywhere near the $1 million mark each when they are auctioned next month, an investment expert believes.
David Whitburn, the Auckland Property Investors Association immediate past president and a landlord with an Auckland portfolio, said he doubted the auctions would yield huge sums.
All three West Auckland houses are advertised by Barfoot & Thompson as having three bedrooms and QV data shows pre-renovation CVs ranging from $400,000 to $580,000 - well below Barfoot's Auckland average $747,521 selling price last month.
Mr Whitburn predicted the places would come nowhere near matching the $1.5 million winner of TV3's The Block NZ last year.
"Despite the epic promotion and ... the top rating of the show, it's extremely unlikely any will sell for $1 million.
"The renovations are good but they only had $100,000 budgets and a few sponsor add-ons with design consulting. I see very few West Auckland auctions hitting over $1 million - only a few houses in West Harbour, Titirangi, the flash part of New Lynn and Te Atatu Peninsula."
The houses were all old but solid yet were not on huge sites, Mr Whitburn said.
"I personally see value in the high $600,000s to early $700,000s right now.
"There is more work to do and more episodes to screen, and the extra marketing and clever format may help drive the price higher come auction night," Mr Whitburn said.
On last year's The Block NZ, Corban and Alex Walls' winning Pt Chevalier property sold for $1,552,000, $227,000 above the reserve.
In previous series of The Block, four Takapuna homes went for $800,000 to $961,000 each and four Belmont places sold for $970,000 to $1.126 million each.
Peter Thompson, Barfoot's managing director, said it was impossible to predict prices on the places featured on the show, which screens three times a week and is watched by about 359,000 viewers.
"Some of them have put big money into doing them up. We need to see what the final product is like to get the prices but they're not finished yet."
Because it was reality TV, people wanted to view the properties "just to be nosy parkers", Mr Thompson said.
Colleen Milne, Real Estate Institute chief executive, said it was difficult to predict prices but CVs from last year were irrelevant as a price guide due to the places being renovated to such high standards and the speed of Auckland price rises.
"The families have spent a lot and some of them have added rooms so that takes them into a totally different category. But I would hope they were conscious of not over-capitalising, even in a market that's rapidly accelerating in price like Auckland is."
But she said having new bathrooms, kitchens and being entirely upgraded should attract strong bidding.
"If someone wants it on the day, they will pay. But there's still only so much people will pay for West Auckland."
In the series, the mums and dads have bought the houses for their cash-strapped offspring and their partners, and together they are being shown renovating the properties.
Mr Whitburn questioned the impression viewers got of the house renovation process from the show.
"Room by room is not the most efficient method to do this 99.5 per cent of the time." Work was more usually across an entire house, not room-by-room, he said.
