From USA Today:
Reality TV is getting a strong dose of realty TV.
Even as home sales and prices rapidly cool, shows that focus on selling homes — particularly for home “flippers” — remain a hot and growing commodity.
Cable channels including HGTV, TLC, Bravo, A&E and DIY are ratcheting up home-dealing programming with new shows featuring developers, investors and do-it-yourselfers.
Part of the push is spillover from housing’s boom times. “These shows became popular when real estate became water-cooler and cocktail-party talk,” says Chicago real estate agent Mark Nash, whose book credits include 1001 Tips for Buying and Selling a Home.
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But even as the go-go days of selling property for big, fast profits are fading, undaunted cable channel executives say that interest among viewers and well-heeled sponsors ranging from home improvement retailers to beer marketers remains strong. Another plus: These shows are generally inexpensive to produce.With five shows already devoted to realty TV, cable’s HGTV just launched Bought & Sold, Secrets That Sell and Get It Sold. The genre accounts for 33% of HGTV’s lineup, the network’s top-rated House Hunters draws a healthy 1.2 million viewers nightly, and overall prime-time network ratings are up 13% in the first three months of 2007.
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Yet as opportunities are harder to come by and less profitable, some real estate experts say viewers might want to watch realty TV as much for entertainment value as advice.“It’s a great time for people who want to buy and hold,” says Judy Milstein, a Potomac, Md., Long & Foster agent. “But you are not going to make a lot of money flipping quickly.”
Have to say I love these shows.
There’s a full hour of “This Old House” every night at 11:00PM.
“Bob Vila’s Home Again” at 12:30.
“Buy Me” at 8:30.
“This Old House” doesn’t rank because they aren’t fixated on home prices and profits.
This new breed of television shows aren’t about home improvement, they are about quick profits and easy money.
I see very little difference between Jim Cramer’s Mad Money and these “Flip” shows.
jb
I personally like ‘Property Ladder’. Lately, at the end of the hour, more and more you see them stuck with a property that won’t sell.
I’d watch a show called Flop House, with a lot of schadenfreude. At the end of every show, the place is rented out to a bunch of non-related people.
Yeah, I’d watch that.
It can be put on right after Cops. Or after that show my husband likes with the Dog guy bounty-hunter. They could offer the house on a future contract to the people Dog takes to jail, at a discount if they go along quietly.
Dog shows up in a nice McMansion neighborhood, and knocks on everybody’s door to ask them if he’s seen…