« Toronto Real Estate Market “Leveling” | Main | Downtown Oshawa is looking up »
Market woes mean reno shows
The slowdown of home sales in the real world has not hurt the growth of property-related programming. If anything, the housing slump has reduced the genre to two simple choices: Fix-it shows and flip-it shows.
In the United States, where the housing crisis is more pronounced, the trend is more toward the flipping option. According to The New York Times, ratings on HGTV and TLC - the two cable channels with the highest volume of home reno shows - have soared in correlation with the gradual decline of the housing market in the past few years.
In recent months, TLC has been earning all-time high ratings for shows such as Property Guide, Date My House and Flip That House (which is not to be confused with A&E's Flip This House). Prospective home buyers and sellers are looking for any edge they can find.
"The current economic environment is changing everything about home TV shows," TLC president Angela Shapiro-Mathes said last week at the TV critics press tour. "People aren't buying and selling homes the way they were a few years ago. Now, they're worried about paying the mortgage, or whether or not they should move in the first place."
The changing times have prompted TLC to form a Saturday-night prime-time block titled House Calls featuring the popular home-reno programs My First Home, Trading Spaces and the more recent addition of the Canadian-made series, Holmes on Homes (which airs in Canada on HGTV, Thursdays at 8 p.m.). The arrival of the brawny contractor on American cable television means a broader viewing audience, but his message remains the same: buyer beware.
"The whole idea of real estate is to make money," says Holmes, who came to Los Angeles to promote the show's U.S. launch. "People use cheaper contractors to get the work done, and before long they've got a leak that turned into mould or some other problem. And it's getting worse."
Holmes has performed countless missions of mercy since the show launched on Canadian television in 2003. Forever sporting work coveralls and his trademark buzz cut, the native of Halton Hills, Ont., specializes in uncovering substandard construction and works with each homeowner to fix the problem.
Over six seasons, Holmes has discovered more mouldy walls, unsafe wiring, rusty pipes and generally shoddy repair jobs than anyone on television. On this week's show, he leads his team of carpenters, electricians and plumbers into a development where literally every new house is beset by cheap workmanship. As in all renovation matters, the road to proper home repair begins with finding the right person for the job.
"There is still no substitution for a reliable contractor," he says. "I think the mistake of some programs is showing people how simple it can be, and that they can do it themselves. I'm totally against it. You might as well perform your own brain operation."
The house-flipping phenomenon is taken in a different direction with the upcoming series Hope for Your Home, which makes its debut in August on TLC. Hosted by Kirsten Kemp Becker of TLC's popular Property Ladder, the new series acknowledges the sagging housing market and shows distressed homeowners how to add value to their domiciles before putting out the For Sale sign.
Source: Toronto Globe and Mail
July 21, 2008 in Home Maintenance Matters | Permalink
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
https://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341c51e453ef00e553ae443e8833
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Market woes mean reno shows:
Comments
The comments to this entry are closed.
