Family memories don’t sell houses, but getting tough love on TV does

Andrew Winter, host of Selling Houses Australia, is somewhere between a real estate agent and a stern fairy godfather as he swoops into a brick 1970s rabbit warren in the Adelaide suburb of Rostrevor.

Once inside, he begins tut-tutting at the lack of natural light and scoffing at owner Lyn’s shambolic furnishings. It’s the first house to be featured in the 18th season of Foxtel’s property makeover show, and it’s a hot mess of clashing eras, random extensions and a Moroccan-themed mezzanine.

As Winter remarks to interior design expert Wendy Moore: “This is a house of great family memories”. But family memories don’t sell houses.

“Look, we’re about selling the home on,” says Winter, a real estate agent since the age of 17 in his native UK who recently sold his family home in Mermaid Beach on the Gold Coast for an undisclosed sum. “So we’re not about creating a home that will make you warm and fuzzy. We’re about creating a home that will sell. Those that don’t believe staging doesn’t work don’t know the market. It works. It gives people that aspiration.”

Lyn, and the other vendors across this 12-part season, tagged “the most uplifting ever”, are appreciative of Winter’s blunt truths, and of the help of Moore and landscape designer Dennis Scott in making their homes more marketable.

“It’s always been about the people,” says Winter. “And it’s always been about lots of different Australians. We’ve prided ourselves on trying to cover the very high end of the market, but certainly the lower to middle, and lower upper end of the market.

“Some other shows – I’m naming no names, but it rhymes with ‘lock’ – are completely unobtainable for 99.9 per cent of Australians. It’s just this crazy spec fest: How expensive can an oven be? How expensive can your flooring be, and how much can you blow on a random window? And that isn’t what Selling Houses is about.

“Selling Houses has always been about trying to help people that have failed selling their home or, in some instances, are terrified of putting it on the market.”

The two decades Winter has spent in property television, which includes Foxtel’s ongoing Love it or List it Australia, which he presents with The Block judge Neale Whitaker, has seen the emergence of the celebrity real-estate agent – The Block’s Marty Fox, Selling Sunset’s Chrishell Stause, the cast of Luxe Listings Sydney.

“[Back then] there was probably [The Block judge] John McGrath and little old me,” says Winter. “Now, there are lots of them. And there are social media real-estate stars. The agent who sold our house has already done a video outside. It’s a whole different world now … What I think is interesting is what Marty Fox represents – he’s using brand over individual agent, which is a very clever strategy.”

Winter has also ventured into social media, producing, with Scott, the YouTube channel Betty’s Place, which follows the budget renovation of a 1980s house in the Brisbane suburb of Bellbird Park.

“It’s an experiment. We want to know what it really costs – no TV bullshit, no media, no hype,” he says. “Let’s say we get a free sink. We won’t put that as a zero cost. We will tell you exactly what that sink would have cost retail. We hope to be able to reveal, in three or four months, the actual cost of renovating this house.”

Despite the “For sale by owner” trend, Winter believes agents aren’t going anywhere soon.

“I’m sorry to say, real estate agents are still going to exist,” he says. “Because people need people. It’s that touchy-feely thing. We need that third human party involved.”

He also doesn’t sugar-coat his prediction for the 2026 market. “The interest rates won’t help the lower end of the market. And we’re in weird times because we have no stock.”

For buyers, the basic principles remain. “It’s still all about the feeling when you buy. It really is. And if it’s not, then you shouldn’t be buying it.”