Published Date 11/28/2018
Your local Realtor knows, when he or she sets up a slew of showings for you, that there are two kinds of home buyers: those who watch HGTV and those who don’t. The problem with the ones who do? They are not necessarily steeped in reality, even though HGTV’s shows carry that moniker.
So what is the Realtor’s first clue that you-you are an HGTV devotee? For one, you might seem to think you’re not going to have to look at very many properties — which is just about the farthest thing from the truth. Crammed into about 50 minutes of programming, segments of Chip and Joanna Gaines’ Fixer Upper, the twins who constitute The Property Brothers, or David and Hillary’s Love it or List It do NOT demonstrate how real estate is purchased in real life. And one of the biggest issues in our current real estate market is the length of time it is taking to find a home.
So how long DOES it take these days? With the lack of homes for sale nationally, it has become very common for it to take longer than a year for a buyer to find a home and sign a contract, according to many real estate experts. This means weighing every home, online and in person, with your own reality. Commute to work? School district? Updating the interior? Negotiating a price you can live with? If the shoe doesn’t fit, you’re back to the drawing board each time as your friendly Realtor becomes your advisor, your super sleuth and your best friend for a good, long while.
Ever notice how the hosts ask each of their clients about their budget for a home and then proceed to show them homes that are not necessarily within that budget? Do they know something we don’t? Most buyers don’t have an unlimited amount of money, but these reality shows nevertheless give many viewers an unrealistic idea of what they can afford as well as what things cost. When a client on one of these shows says they want two entire floors of their home remodeled for $70K, including a complete kitchen do-over, use your head. That figure might only take care of a kitchen and a downstairs powder room in many parts of the country.
What one pays in Waco Texas (where the median home cost in Waco is $110,400) is not what they would pay for in St. Louis, Phoenix, or Atlanta. And those credits that fly by at the end of the show? Bet you don’t notice that some of the suppliers, contractors, and home stagers are throwing in their services in exchange for being listed there, never mentioned in the hosts’ bottom line when they make quotes.
What you also don’t know when you watch these shows is that conflict is sometimes contrived — built into the story — for your viewing pleasure. An outdated countertop, ugly wallpaper, stale smells, dead bugs, old appliances, and 1960s paneling often find buyer-guests on these shows turning up their noses and having little to no vision for what can be done with a listing, creating the idea that properties need to be perfect to sell. This creates a fantasy for both buyers as well as sellers who have no gold mines to tap into when listing their homes. And how about all those “contingency” dollars built into the budget that magically seem to cover the sudden discovery of knob-and-tube wiring? Most contractors don’t build an extra $20K into their quote to cover it.
In the recent HuffPost real estate article, Bad Lessons You’ve Learned From Watching HGTV, a Realtor is quoted saying, “There’s a reason people say to buy the worst place on the best block. Nothing is perfect, and no renovation is instantaneous — even though HGTV says otherwise. Buyers are often all flash and no structure anymore. They will ignore old HVAC systems for new countertops and cabinets.”
Apart from pricing the cost of remodels, probably the worst fiction in all this is the time frame they mention. While HGTV shows don’t whitewash the idea that renovations take a lot of work, they can make it seem as if it can all be done pretty quickly — usually within 4-7 weeks depending on the size of the home and the improvements to be made. What you don’t know is that by the time these shows start filming, they’re already six months into the process and project. They just don’t show you that detail. Long before you see Chip and Joanna showing a house, there are permits, contractors and suppliers lined up and committed. What you are shown is out of sequence so it can be smashed into 50 minutes of entertainment. Those contractors are somehow completely dedicated to the homebuyer or seller and their project, with multiple crews working around the clock to complete the TV show project. Real life? Hardly. Most contractors must work multiple jobs at the same time, often making you intermittently wait a week or so before they show up for more work on your home.
The gist of all this? Take the reality of TV “reality” shows the way you would when watching old episodes of shows like Law and Order. While they may be telling a true story, condensing it into the budgets, time-frames, and expectations of the average buyer or seller is NOT real.
Source: HuffPost, TBWS
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