House Hunters - Behind the Designer Curtain
Who doesn't have a story to tell after going through the home buying/selling process? And more than a few of those stories are good for a hearty chuckle or a genuine gasp from family and friends--but it seems that for HGTV real life just isn't quite interesting enough!
Viewers of the network, myself included, have always figured that there was a certain amount of "staging" involved with the popular show, House Hunters (and it's jet-setting companion, House Hunters International). But after an article (read: exposé) posted on the blog Hooked on Houses yesterday, June 11, the world learned that the show may be even more "unreal" than we ever thought!
Take a look at the article linked below and another from The Consumerist and judge for yourself:
-House Hunters: What It Was Like to be On the Show
-Just How Fake is HGTVs House Hunters?
Personally, I had already gathered that by the time the show aired the featured hunters had already decided on their favorite house. Many viewers were even a step ahead of me and had already figured out (and leaked on the Internet) that many times you could tell which house those on the show would get based on it being empty--since they were already in escrow. But the extent of the staging of the show may extend much further than anyone realized--as in the particular case in the exposé article, where according to the source, the other two homes they "hunted" weren't even for sale, they were the homes of two friends who were gracious enough to let them be borrowed for filming on the show.
Darn. Next they're going to be telling me that those before and after design shows are done to rooms on sets in a sound stage! Well, they fooled me. Did they fool you? It will be interesting to see what kind of impact, if any, the news has on the network and the show. House Hunters and it's many spin-offs has dominated the network's line-up for quite some time and the top rated-show has a cult following (including an unintended spin-off--House Hunters, the drinking game!) But then again, if viewers of the show are anything like me, it won't really matter. The show will still be as light and sleep-inducing at the end of a long day, as it ever was.
