Before Adrian Portelli was buying entire streets and before reserve prices became a weekly talking point, there was the Glasshouse: the 2014 season that taught Australia a hard lesson about what happens when five nearly identical apartments hit the market on the same night. Two teams walked away with $10,000 each. Ten grand. For three months of work on national television. Grab a coffee, this one still stings.
The Glasshouse Wrap, for People in a Hurry
| Season | 9 (the second of two seasons in 2014) |
| Location | The Glasshouse, High Street, Prahran, Melbourne |
| Aired | 27 July – 12 October 2014, Channel Nine |
| Winner | Shannon and Simon Vos, $335,000 profit plus the $100,000 prize |
| Auction low point | Two teams took home $10,000 each |
| Judges | Neale Whitaker, Shaynna Blaze, Darren Palmer |
Season 9 turned a 1960s office building on Prahran’s High Street into five luxury apartments, and the show was so pleased with the glass frontage it named the whole season after it. The five Glasshouse teams came from five different states, lived through one of the most compressed build schedules the show had attempted, and then stood in a car park on auction night watching three of them get comprehensively rolled by Melbourne’s property market.
The Five Teams
Shannon and Simon Vos, brothers from Tasmania, arrived as the knockabout tradie duo and left as the season’s undisputed winners. Michael and Carlene Duffy flew the flag for the Gold Coast and for anyone who has ever said “coastal Queensland style” in a design meeting. Darren and Deanne Jolly brought AFL credentials (Darren spent years as a ruckman) and Melbourne polish. Karstan and Maxine, engaged and from Newcastle, spent the season planning a wedding between room reveals. Jenna and Chris rounded out the lineup from Sydney and, as it turned out, read the market better than almost anyone.
The full week-by-week rundown lives in our Glasshouse episode guide if you want the reveals in order.
Who Won The Block Glasshouse?
Shannon and Simon. Their apartment sold for $1.9 million, a whopping $335,000 above reserve, and the $100,000 winner’s cheque took their night to $435,000. It remains one of the great Block runs: consistently strong rooms, a coherent apartment at the end of it, and an auction result that nearly matched everyone else’s combined.
The 2014 Auction: The Night the Music Stopped
The judges’ scores gave the highest-scoring teams choice of auction order. Michael and Carlene chose first and picked last position, which is the sort of decision that looks strategic right up until it isn’t. Jenna and Chris got no choice at all, went first, and promptly banked the second-best result of the night.
| Result | Team | Sale price | Winnings |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | Shannon and Simon | $1,900,000 | $335,000 + $100,000 prize |
| 2nd | Jenna and Chris | $1,810,000 | $310,000 |
| 3rd | Karstan and Maxine | $1,700,000 | $40,000 |
| 4th | Darren and Deanne | $1,380,000 | $10,000 |
| 4th | Michael and Carlene | Under $1.4 million | $10,000 |
The maths was brutal. Outside the top two, three teams split $60,000 between them. Deanne’s devastation on camera became one of the era’s defining Block images, and the season is still the case study people reach for whenever anyone suggests selling five similar apartments in one building on one night. Our live auction rundown from the night captured it bid by bid, typos and all, and we have left it exactly as it was written.
If you enjoy auction-night carnage as a genre, the 2020 Brighton season raised the stakes with a winning buyer who never paid, and the 2024 Phillip Island season went the other way entirely when one billionaire bought all five houses.
Where Are They Now?
Shannon and Simon Vos: still building, literally. The brothers launched Vos Creative in 2015, with Simon running the construction side and Shannon carving out a serious interior design career, including a $7.7 million dream build in Torquay that made headlines on its own. The Block win aged into a genuine career for both.
Michael and Carlene Duffy: the Gold Coast couple turned their $10,000 heartbreak into Cedar + Suede, their own design and construction business, and Carlene became a fixture of the Australian interiors media scene. Living well is the best revenge.
Darren and Deanne Jolly: the great redemption arc. They came straight back for Triple Threat in 2015 and won the whole thing, taking home $935,000, which is what you call a correction. The couple later split after 13 years of marriage, and both remain in Victoria.
Karstan and Maxine: married after the show, as planned, wedding budget presumably unassisted by the $40,000. Karstan founded homewares label Poppy Smith Design and returned to real estate, while Max went back into events.
Jenna and Chris: the quiet achievers took their $310,000 and kept the lowest profile of any Glasshouse team, which after that auction night seems like the sanest response available.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who won The Block Glasshouse?
Brothers Shannon and Simon Vos won the 2014 Glasshouse season. Their apartment sold for $1.9 million, earning $335,000 over reserve plus the $100,000 winner’s prize: $435,000 all up.
How much did the Glasshouse apartments sell for?
Between roughly $1.38 million and $1.9 million. Only two teams made meaningful money: Shannon and Simon ($335,000 over reserve) and Jenna and Chris ($310,000). The other three teams shared just $60,000.
Where was The Block Glasshouse?
High Street, Prahran, in Melbourne’s inner south-east: a converted 1960s office building nicknamed the Glasshouse.
What season was The Block Glasshouse?
Season 9, and the second Block season of 2014, following Fans v Faves earlier that year.
Why were the Glasshouse auction results so poor?
Five similar apartments, one building, one night. Buyers had no scarcity and knew it, and once the early sales soaked up the bidders willing to pay a premium, the later auctions ran out of oxygen. The show has been fine-tuning reserves and auction formats ever since.
Keep Reading
→ The Block Glasshouse contestants: all five teams
→ The Glasshouse episode guide, week by week
→ The 2014 auction liveblog, as it happened
→ Meet The Block 2026 teams at Mount Eliza
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