Posted on 02/25/2020 6:32:04 AM PST by Kaslin
Like many people, I’ve been watching House Hunters and its cousin House Hunters International on HGTV with considerable interest, though perhaps not for the usual reasons. I understand the charm the program has for its viewers: the pleasure of visiting houses and their locales, the ideas one may get for redecorating one’s own dwelling, the information about places one may wish to visit or move to, the guessing game regarding which of the inevitable three houses the purchasers will settle for, or simply abundant material for one’s fantasy life.
But I do wonder how many viewers realize that the whole business is largely a scripted hallucination which may even be hazardous to one’s future decisions if taken seriously. And as we will see in the ensuing, it partakes as well of a progressivist rage for leftist queer and gender politics.
To begin with, House Hunters et al. paint a scrubbed and prettified picture of the subject. I recall several episodes dealing with the lovely Greek island of Paros, featuring gorgeous, well-appointed villas replete with lavish amenities including ample showers and impressive fireplaces. I lived in Greece for several years and know the island well -- well enough to know that, like most Aegean islands, it suffers from critical water shortages and an equally critical lack of firewood owing to centuries of forest denudation. Showers will be few and winters will be rheumatoid. And unwary buyers will be sucking lemons.
This is only one instance of the HGTV lie. Cabo San Lucas is another popular HGTV fable, focusing on gleaming condominiums and stunning views. The hagglers, cheats, swarms of importunate vendors, heavy traffic, sewage treatment problems and evidence of extortionate prices are left on the cutting-room floor. Caveat emptor.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
House hunters is basically voyeurism. We get to see the inside of nice houses and condos, period. No one really gives a s__t about the “drama” of whether the couple buys the place or not.
They filmed an episode segment in my neighborhood a few years ago. Never aired. Guess it was too pedestrian.
Indeed, we are witnessing a form of what poststructuralist French theorist Michael Foucault called biopolitics, explained in his collected lectures The Birth of Biopolitics as “a new body, a multiple body, a body with so many heads that…cannot necessarily be counted.”
Read more: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/02/house_hunters_a_window_on_a_derelict_culture.html#ixzz6EydAxveS
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dont watch it. problem solved
“Joe, a young carpenter, and his wife Sue, a nurse, are looking for a starter house in Orange County California within their budget of 1.75 million or less...”
You can evade having to watch certain shows but none of us can escape the liberal culture. Its all around us,
You have to be millionaires to afford a nice home in a nice neighborhood today.
In my childhood, things were different for the middle class.
I can’t stand these house/flipping shows, in fact I am put off by most if not all “reality” television and most television programs in general. I’ve reduced my entertainment diet to old, black and white films made mostly in the 40’s as for the rest of the crud on boob toob, I leave the room when it’s on.
My wife and I travel to Mexico frequently, and we have thought about retiring there. We have looked at houses in Riviera Maya, Puerto Vallarta, and Cabo. In both Riviera Maya and PV, our Real Estate agents were realtors that had been the agents on Mexico Life (another variant of the show). They told us that they apply to be on the show (it is great for business for them) and once accepted, they are given a list of criteria to look for in buyers to feature on the show, and those criteria include price ranges and family situations. I dug in about this a bit, because I noticed a high percentage of the shows featured gay couples, and that is indeed a factor that will improve your chance of being featured. In most cases, the couple has bought the house before filming begins, and then other properties are brought in to replicate the selection process. This is because they dont want a bunch of shows where nobody ends up buying.
My Mom and Dad built their first house in 1969, 3BR 1500sq/ft ranch on a 1/2 acre in rural Iowa for $17k.
Gone are those days.
Exactly. Damn near the dumbest show on TV.
I loathe these shows. My mother, who thinks these “house-fixing” shows are cute, doesn’t understand the pure evil these people do.
The bane of my existence was for a three year period those God blessed house flippers. We tried to find a reasonably priced decent house in our area. No sooner than it hit the market, it would be right off again. Then it would be back on, maybe three weeks later, several grand over its original price with a new “whatever” the flipper’s specialty was. There were several flippers in our area.
The easiest to spot was what I call the “Gothic nightmare” kitchen, the exact same one, over and over again in multiple houses. Didn’t matter what the style or era of the house was, they would just drop in this hideous kitchen with detailed wood and glass cabinets and ornate finials on top, call it done and put it back on the market, leaving the rest of the house dirty and nasty.
1968..
My parents bought a brand new, custom built, waterfront home on the Inter-coastal waterway in Florida. 3 BR / 3 Bath with dock for $22K
It would cost $22K just to rebuild the dock today.
Flipping is a risky business. It isn’t as glamorous as the HGTV reality shows make it out to be.
If no one’s buying you’re stuck with a lemon property you can’t offload on the market.
The flipper takes all the risk. A buyer takes none.
The house hunting shows require that you have a contract on a house before you can be on the show.
The product is the tv show, not the house.
The only way flippers on the shows make money is the profit is already locked in for them.
Otherwise its a gamble.
A house in my area was featured on Home and Garden just before the crash in 2008. It was the first house in a new resort development and was a big PR stunt for the builder.
The entire development went belly up and the house sold for a song along with all the individual building lots, one at a time. The initial sales were between 70,000-$100,000 per lot and those ended up selling for as low as $4000 each on the courthouse steps.
Anyone with a functioning brain has known the shows are fake for years. My wife watches for the scenery, locations and décor.
Now Green Acres, THAT was good television.
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