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Renovation shows blamed for housing bubble

"It's a great pity that we have two renovation shows against each other," says Nine's Andrew Backwell.

RR2801 Reno Rumble with Scott Cam

Renovation shows are being blamed for fuelling house price bubbles in Sydney and part of Melbourne, a Senate estimates committee has been told.

Treasury secretary John Fraser said the popularity of shows such as The Block, House Rules and Reno Rumble were to blame for dizzying prices.

The comments follow The Block having enjoyed record auction sales in late April.

Andrew Backwell, Nine’s Director of Programming and Production told Fairfax, “There has been a lot of renovation TV on this year. It definitely been saturated in that area.

“You are seeing Reno Rumble up against House Rules. It’s a great pity that we have two renovation shows against each other on two big channels, so essentially you split the audience – one day Reno Rumble wins the next day House Rules wins.”

Both of which is good news for TEN’s MasterChef.

Of course it was Nine that opted to cast former House Rules contestants into a new format, seen by many as a spoiler against Seven’s renovation show (itself greenlit following Nine’s successes with The Block).  Last year Seven CEO Tim Worner revealed Nine’s brash casting move, with some cynicism, ahead of Nine’s own announcement.

Both Seven and Nine are filming second seasons of their shows, due to air later this year, while Seven also combines food and renovation in Restaurant Revolution.

8 Responses

  1. Agree with others that its more of a symptom than a cause. Whenever the bubble bursts it will make a nice little retro TV package along the lines of “Remember when we all saw the USA property bubble burst and then proceeded to do the same thing in Australia?”

    Its also symptomatic of the Sydney/Melbourne-centric view of Australian TV stations, outside of Sydney and Melbourne, the rest of the country’s economy and property market is already in recession, and when the music finally stops for the Mel and Sydney property markets there will be some people in massive negative equity situations.

  2. “You are seeing Reno Rumble up against House Rules. It’s a great pity that we have two renovation shows against each other on two big channels, so essentially you split the audience – one day Reno Rumble wins the next day House Rules wins.”

    Well it’s your fault…

  3. To be fair, they’re more of a symptom of the disease rather than the cause. Australian capital city housing has been in one long continuous bubble since at least 2001, if not for 10 years or more before that.

    Manipulating housing construction & interest rates to keep alive the “Aussie Dream” of negative gearing yourself into owning somebody else’s home is the root cause, and has been the basis of domestic fiscal policy for a very long time now…

  4. “There has been a lot of renovation TV on this year. It definitely been saturated in that area…..
    It’s a great pity that we have two renovation shows against each other on two big channels”????
    One wouldn’t need 20/20 hindsight vision to see that one coming. You are the creators of your own demise Nine.

  5. These programs are very over exposed already people will eventually get sick of them – I myself find them very boring and unwatchable

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