I have a love-hate relationship with HGTV. I love watching people renovate their homes or shop for new ones. Mostly it's because I'm nosy. I'm the kind of person who peeks in your medicine cabinet when I come over for dinner. (Which may explain why I don't get a lot of invites.) When I go for a walk in a neighbourhood, I have to fight back the urge to peer in people's windows and see what their furniture looks like. There are a few houses in my neighbourhood where I'd just like to park my Barcalounger outside their living room window and watch their lives in HD.
Two of the shows I love to hate the most are House Hunters and Property Virgins. Now, don't get me wrong, I love me some Sandra Rinomato, and when I'm finally in the position to buy a home, I hope that my Realtor® (don't get started on how annoying I find it that this word is trademarked) is half as charming, patient and helpful as Sandra. However both of these programs are showcases for what is wrong with American home buyers today.
Home design shows have made monsters out of the average American home buyer. They have set the bar for the "essentials" in a home so high that most sellers can't keep up.
In the old days, and in some third world countries today, whole families lived in one room with a chamber pot, if they were lucky, windows without double paned eco friendly non toxic glass, and a fire pit that served as both their kitchen and their furnace. But, in the HGTV era the basic home that was good enough for our parents isn't good enough for us. If it doesn't sparkle, shine, glint, gleam, and have new hardwood floors we're not interested.
Does your home have white walls? Shame on you! Do you not know you need a pop of colour to bring out your hardwood floors? Oh, wait, you have carpet? Is it Berber? No? Oh, that's a problem.
Does your kitchen have wallpaper? What were you thinking? That's so last decade! You're going to need to steam that off and paint the room a neutral colour from the approved "Designer Neutrals" list. Wait! What's that I see? You don't have stainless steel appliances? They hell you say! That's a deal breaker right there. You can't expect the new home owner to store their food in your white Kenmore fridge that's served you so well since you bought it last year. Well, at least you've got granite countertops right? No? I'm sorry you'll need to drop your asking price by at least $35,000 since the buyer is going to need to completely gut the kitchen before they can move in.
Let's look at your master bedroom. Oh, no tray ceiling? Hmmm... well, that's okay, so long as the bathroom is en suite, has two sinks, a steam shower and a Jacuzzi tub. It does, doesn't it? Oh god! Are those plain silver fixtures on the sink? Ugh, they are gonna have to gut this room as well. If you had handmade mosaics in the shower that might offset the fact that the vanity isn't marble from a remote island off the coast of Naples. Now, about that walk-in closet... Oh this won't do! If it's not the size of a small bedroom there's no where for the buyer to put their 100+ shoes and all their winter clothes. I'm afraid you're going to wind up having to pay closing costs to make up for the expense of making this master suite liveable for the buyer.
Now, let's take a look at your backyard. You know I understand that the lot is 7,000 square feet, but it just seems like you've wasted an opportunity to maximize your living space here. Yards are nice and all, but if you could see your way clear to putting concrete over 75% of it and enclosing the porch we could list your home as being 5,000 square feet which will help you recoup your losses for the kitchen and master. Also, you might think about putting in an infinity pool and a lava rock fountain with a hot tub. Never mind that the neighbour's bedroom balcony looks right out over it. Privacy isn't everything.
I swear, half the time I'm watching these shows I'm screaming at the home buyer for being such an spoiled ass. I can't tell you the number of times in the last week I've heard some shrill woman announce "buuuuuuut I waaaaaaaaaaaant stainless steel appliances! This kitchen is a deal breaker for me!" Or heard a man say "This half-finished basement won't work for me, I need a move-in ready bonus room for my man cave." Gah! What they both need is a good tight slap.
What's almost worse, and slightly embarrassing is House Hunters International, where Americans with enough money to buy a vacation home in foreign destination or retire to an island, bring their gluttony for interior design with them. They look at flats that have housed generations of Italian families and gasp in horror at the small kitchen and scaled down appliances or shared bathrooms. What? The washing machine-cum-dryer is in the kitchen and there's no dishwasher? The whole family shares a bathroom? What's up with these Europeans putting skirting under their sinks rather than custom kitchen cupboards made out of endangered wood? How do these natives survive? I'm always horribly embarrassed for the poor local real estate agent (don't have to worry about the fancy trademarked word in foreign countries so there!) who tries to explain that in their country people don't actually need appliances the size of a small SUV and that some still hang their laundry out to dry on a line. I have no idea what they would make of the episode of Dear Genevieve I saw today where she put two ranges, side by side, in a kitchen - because she could.
I don't think that Countrywide and other unscrupulous lenders are the only ones to blame for the current state of affairs in the American housing market. Sure , they told Teresa Giudice and her husband they could earn $70,000 a year and spend millions on a custom home, which they appear to be paying for with spray tan and mob money, but HGTV told her to have an entire Italian villa dismantled and rebuilt in her New Jersey subdivision. I also blame the greedy producers of these home renovation programs, Home Depot, Lowe's and whomever came up with the term "designer neutrals" as well. They have conned Americans into believing that a house can't be home without an open floor plan and imported Italian marble floors in the entry way.
And we still need giant storage units to store all our stuff. What's up with that?
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crazypants
Boanerges1
Amy A
Mike Hunt
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Salon.com
Comments
Having just purchased a new home, I can tell you that modern home buyers are complete bitches.
For me, the only thing worth watching on HGTV (assuming I want to keep my blood pressure under control) is Mike Holmes.
Rated.
-R-
The most up-to-date room in out house - the basement - was re-done in the 1970's by someone who liked shag carpeting, a wet bar featuring avacado tile counter tops, marquee(sp?) lighting, arch shaped mirrors -- and best of all, a plaster treatment on the ceiling that deliberately resembles stalagtites -- the pointy ends which scrape the top of my 6' tall husband's head when he brings the laundry downstairs. What a visionary the prior owner must have been! Especially since this was created before the term "man cave" entered common use. My 15 year old son loves it down there because that's where the ps-3 is located.
I watch it for her ridiculous sleeves. Seriously, how can this woman wander through a room stuffed with men working without getting a tassle or cord pulled into a power tool and ripping her arm off?
Great post, Surly!
Lezlie
Oh, and cheers for Mike Holmes. I think I have learned more about electric and HVAC from watching that show ...
We too just bought our first home, we're just glad to have a roof and a bed that a landlord will not take away on a whim -- I miss when a house was a house, not a purchasing/social status/decorating platform....
Why is this? Who thought this up? When did it happen? Why wasn't I consulted?
The house we bought next had been sneered at by a whole bunch of buyers because of the color on the walls - that nasty mid-80s mustard yellow that Ralph Lauren said was trendy for 15 minutes. It was ugly, and it made the place dark and dingy-looking. No one could see past the color to the huge windows, two-car garage, reasonably spacious kitchen, nicely proportioned rooms, big closets and so on...
Naturally we bought it. Paint is the cheapest thing you could possibly to to change a house. We would have painted ANY color out on the walls, including and especially white. It's easy.
With House Hunters International, though, it isn't always Americans doing the shopping. Just last week, I saw an episode with an Irish family eager to move to a less gloomy environment, and they chose a village in Italy.
A house I stayed in briefly 4 years ago when I first arrived in Texas was about 7,000 sq ft, 4 BR, 3 1/2 baths, and was the starter home for a young couple with no kids, he worked, she went to college in another city, they were so house poor he wouldn't run the heat or AC because he couldn't afford them. Sat in his big cathedral ceiling Great Room watching football on TV while wearing a coat, gloves, hat, and earmuffs.
People are nuts!
Rated
Just a week ago, we re-did our retirement home kitchen floor with brick-styled tile only to see an HGTV show a couple of days later where the young couple looked in horror at the awful kitchen floor of brick-styled tiles. And, shortly before that, we took up the carpeting and had laminate floors installed (we had hardwood in our old house and both choices are major improvements over worn carpeting, believe me, and equally attractive and easy to keep up). But that's definitely unacceptable for young house hunters and even those looking for apartments these days.
One advertiser on the network urges viewers to "paint your rooms in THIS YEAR's colors" but then provides contradictory visuals of red, orange, bright green and turquoise, while the HGTV designers obviously believe "this year's colors" are various shades of gray and, to give things a "pop" using chocolate brown. They paint over beautiful woodwork (that some previous homeowner probably spent weeks removing old paint from) and make it white or cream (for some future homeowner to spend weeks removing to restore it to its nature wood color).
How about taking an antique table and surrounding it with plastic chairs? Arrrggghhhhhh!!!!! Covering up beautiful fireplaces and mantels with glass surrounds, and hanging a 55" flat screen TV above it -- or, as one new designer did on a recent show, a rummage sale portrait of a dour President William Henry Harrison, who only served in office 32 days before he died! The design style she was trying to achieve as "FDR + 1920s-1930s + Beetles" (or something like that!)
The parents who say they need lots of extra room for the kids and their toys make me want to jump up and scream "Get rid of all of those unnecessary toys and gadgets. You don't need them. And how about having the kids share bedrooms?" My 3 shared a single bedroom in our first home and lived through it. Now that they're adults, however, I wonder how they can work in those small apartment/bungalow kitchens without counter ANY space let alone without granite and stainless steel.....
And Nikki Stern: You, too, are right on target with your comment.
But viewers also need to take into consideration that these homebuyers are coached to say both positive and negative things about the places shown to them (it especially comes across when the kids start saying things about countertops or appliances). Sadly, first-time buyers know so little about house structure and safety issues, or basic home ownership, that they make inane comments about the "views" from the bedroom and lots of natural light (as far as I'm concerned, the ideal view from my bedroom is a closed up tight heavy drape to keep out the sun!)
And I shouldn't even get started on CLEAN HOUSE. Again, staged--because if you look closely they're cluttered with unimaginable things but NOT DIRTY. Look away from the clutter to the pictures on the walls that are straight and orderly, or the outside free of junk with no peeling paint. So, why in the world would people want to appear on national TV in those embarassing situations? Are they sick??? Just for a home makeover? For their 15 minutes of fame----as PIGS?
Had a discussion with a friend about moving after the kid leaves. She talked of designing a log cabin with cathedral ceilings and jacuzzi tubs. When I told her I hoped to find a small, clapboard farmhouse with a porch big enough for rocking she was speechless.
R
I basically hate Buyers - those with a capital B; and most American white people who think they can Buy whatever they want, so I just flip the switch when they're on.
In January of 1918 the National Real Estate Journal reported on the use of the new word REALTOR® and efforts to educate the public about what it meant. The word was coined by Charles N. Chadbourn, vice-president of the National Association of Real Estate Boards and former President of the Minneapolis Real Estate Board. In 1916 Chadbourn sold the rights to the word to the National Association for one dollar.
Two years later the Journal reported, “realtor was being taken to rapidly and, better still, was being readily understood and appreciated in its fullest intended sense, by the public.”
Chadbourn told the Journal, “The advantage of a distinguishing mark by which the public may know the responsible, expert real estate man from the curbstoner who possesses no such qualifications, is being warmly welcomed by the public.”
REALTOR® would go on to be copyrighted and patented. For the rest of his long life Chadbourn was known as “Father Realtor.”
Courtesty of National Association of Realtors."
I prefer to call my real estate agent Jeff.
Some of what I see on House Hunters tells me that folks don't bother to inform themselves about how to care for their homes either.
My blog is full of posts about wonderful things we did to our house, which was a rental for about ten years before we got it. It's involved a lot of paint, drywall, vertical grain fir and investment in tools. Our house is gorgeous. It had beat up appliances, bad DIY tile counters, and strange little things that the people who built it did when they built themselves into a corner that they didn't understand. The landscape involved grass and a lot of poorly planted Christmas trees. We've enjoyed our DIY projects and think we've made a good home here even if we had to replace anything that moved in the house, including the water faucets that moved, even though they weren't supposed to clang around like that.
We are 100 yards from Toad Lake, and feels like it's way out in the country but is really a 7 minute drive to the nicest grocery store in town and our bank.
Because we were willing to take the time to make it our own we didn't pay as much as some folks do. We bought good bones and a lovely shingle style Pacific Northwest Contemporary home. It suits us. When we drive down our little mountain we see a development that looks a lot like the one Jim Carrey inhabited in "The Truman Show." The perspective seeing such a development offers is profound.
I remember HGTV used to have several shows that demonstrated you how you could decorate on a shoestring - Decorating Cents, Design on a Dime, Room to Go. I truly loved these shows, because they showed some real creativity and ingenuity. Sadly, those shows seemed to have disappeared.
And speaking of the granite/stainless/double sink fetishists, how come, when someone is looking at a million-dollar house, the real estate agent never points out that the cost of replacing every appliance in the kitchen, if you must have it, is probably less than the cost of one of your enormous future mortgage payments?
No master bedroom and only country pine cabinets in the kitchen.
The floor plan just won't do.
Well, then, don't look at a house that is 210 years old!
(anyone interested in looking at it, PM me, and I will send you the link.) Shameless plug, I know, Surly. Fuck off.
And tonight we watched an old episode of House Hunters International where the wife was so anxious to have a vacation home in Italy (where her ancestors emigrated from) that they wound up with a one room building with a tiny "kitchen" and tiny "bath" -- and they have TWO kids. Their plan is to build a new house on the land. I hope the olive grove has big enough crops to provide the $$ to do that---and long distance from Philadephia, to boot.
For me, it will always be a Great Day at Jeff Lewis' Office. Yes, I know. It speaks poorly of me.
My brother recently bought a new home in a new development, and it had all the latest fads in home design. A giant jacuzzi tub that he will never use, for instance, and fancy tile in both bathrooms.
I live in a 70-year-old cottage with 2 closets the size of the entryway coat closet in one of these big-roof monstrosities that are all the rage here in the South.
I thought having a smaller house with minimal storage space would help keep our possessions in check, but alas! I think we are going to be appearing on Hoarders soon. (I think a lot of "hoarders" are just consumption junkies with small houses. Rich people with a lot of closets never look like hoarders, no matter how much crap they buy.)
click it
HERE
Never mind that my husband is a professional chef and we have had NO problems hosting weekend long parties for 20 people at a time.
We obviously have to have a total redo before we sell our house, because no one could POSSIBLY cook in such a space.