I love the TV show House Hunters and its similar shows, House Hunters International, Property Virgins, and the like. Watching people search for a new home, seeing the variety of houses, neighborhoods, and housing prices, is fascinating. Each of these shows have similar structures. The show documents the house hunters looking at houses, showing what they like and don’t like about the houses, what they want from a house, and, at the end, their final selection. It is fun to try to guess which house they will select, often not the one I’d guess.
But sometimes I wonder if these people live in the same universe that I inhabit.
Take the property virgins. These are first time buyers who are living with parents or in apartments. Sometimes the apartments are pretty small and shabby. They usually have the most limited budgets. But they walk into a kitchen and it has formica counters and white appliances and they exclaim, “Oh, this will never do. We can’t possibly live with a kitchen like this!”
Really? I can understand preferring an up-to-date granite-countertop, stainless-steel-applianced kitchen, but “can’t possibly” live with an older kitchen? I am constantly surprised how often couples expect a house, especially a first house, to have everything they want right away. Can’t they see the possibility of replacing appliances or redoing the kitchen when they have the money to do it?
Same thing with bathrooms. If everything else about the house is perfect, why can’t you put up with a pink tiled bathroom, at least for a while? It is not like you spend a lot of time in the bathroom (do you?)
Even more annoying is when the couples see wall color or wall paper they dislike and they poo-poo the entire house.
Last night when I was watching one of the shows, the family loved the house, except the mother worried about the bedrooms being on the second floor, because the children “might trip and fall down the stairs.” Arrrgghhh! How many centuries have families lived in houses with stairways? I’ve heard this more than once on these shows and it always annoys the heck out of me.
On this same show, one of the mother’s must-haves was a pool. She worried that her children would fall down the stairs, but she didn’t worry that they’d fall in the pool? I just don’t get it.
Obviously I put up with being annoyed, because I watch these shows a lot! Who knew that watching ordinary people buy houses or renovate them, or select wedding dresses would be so interesting?
Do you like the House Hunter shows? Do you have a favorite?
I don’t watch the House Hunter shows and it sounds as if I had better not. I would be completely annoyed by the very same things you mentioned! I was an Air Force brat. We lived in everything from a trailer in a trailer park in Selma, Alabama to a row house in Kelsale, England and everything in between. The house my Mom has lived in for the past forty years was the ONLY new home I have ever lived in in my entire life. It is the home my Dad promised her once he retired from the military. And it had ugly orange shag carpet in it when my folks bought it new! Shudder! But now it is the place we all return to for holidays and any other time we can because it is home. My Mom lives there. My Dad’s memory lives there. It has two flights of stairs and no pool and I can assure you my Mom didn’t give buying it a second thought!
I wonder what the difference is between a generation who dwells on expectations and a generation who dwells on possibilities.
Amen to all of that, Louisa! As a former Army brat, I, too, lived in drastically different types of houses, from a mansion (briefly in Japan in the 1950s) to an apartment (also in Japan – a come-down from the mansion) and we did just fine in each of them.
The house we live in now has slowly gotten improvements over about 30 years. When we bought it, we knew there were things we’d want to change.
Love Louisa’s comment. I don’t have cable television, so these shows aren’t available to me. I’m okay with that. I’d hate the same things you do. I took a realty class, and the teacher said, “You don’t buy your dream house. You buy a house with potential and make it your dream home.” Though I don’t watch the shows, I have to admit I love pinning houses on Pinterest.
Somehow the people on these shows didn’t learn to buy a house with potential. Many of them want it all…and at a bargain price, too.
There are other shows, like Property Brothers, that actually do the renovations and those are interesting, too.
Now those are my favorite kind of shows, O Divine One! I love the renovation or makeover shows. They take rooms or houses with nothing but potential and turn them into one of a kind reflections of the people who live there. LOVE that!