The Block finale: Real reason Kristy and Brett came last in shock auction

The Block 2023 came to a dramatic end on Sunday night with South Australian couple Kristy and Brett scoring a profit of just $65,000 over their reserve, not a sum to sneeze at, but in comparison to Steph and Gian's $1,650,000, it came as quite the shock.

"We haven't even covered half our wages for being here," Kristy told the cameras when the auction came to a close at $3,035,000.

The pair were left shocked when their auctioneer, Sam Inan from Belle Property, revealed their reserve price to bidders, with Kristy and Brett saying he "s**t the bed with our game plan".

While the auctioneer's comments likely did have a significant effect on the auction, there is another reason the pair ended up with such a small sum – Adrian Portelli, who bought Steph and Gian, Eliza and Liberty and Kyle and Leslie's properties, did not bid at all on Kristy and Brett's house.

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Viewers would have seen Adrian Portelli bumping up the prices at the first two auctions by large sums, with the investor buying House 4 for $5,000,000 and House 5 for $4,300,000.

An insider has revealed to Yahoo Lifestyle that Adrian was overheard saying he was never going to bid on House 3 because of the public's perception of Kristy and Brett.

It quickly became obvious during the first two auctions that Adrian's bidding was necessary to encourage other bidders to go higher – he even bid against himself during Eliza and Liberty's auction.

"People were loudly and openly discussing why he was not bidding, as the auction dragged on for over 20 minutes longer than the first two auctions," the insider tells us. "The overall opinion of the producers was that personalities and behaviour has never affected the auction results. However, Adrian revealing this to Danny Wallis' assistant after House 3’s auction was pretty telling."

However, Adrian denied saying this, telling our source he chose not to buy all the houses as he was worried about negative backlash from audiences after he was slammed for pushing the bidding so high on Omar and Oz's house last year.

Executive producer Julian Cress refused to comment on any rumours of the auction results.

"If you overheard something in the street I don’t want to make a comment on that," he told the insider.

See all the finished houses here:

• House 1: Kyle and Leslie

• House 2: Leah and Ash

• House 3: Kristy and Brett

• House 4: Steph and Gian

• House 5: Eliza and Liberty

Jules added that Kristy and Brett are two of the best contestants they have ever had on the show, and he felt terrible that they didn't get the result they'd hoped for and thought it was unfair to see them have that result straight after the other teams making over a million dollars.

Julian also thanked Kristy and Brett for their contribution to the series, declaring their time on the show as "compelling".

While there may have been plenty of drama between the houses during the show, it was clear on the day that they are all "closer than ever before".

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