House Hunters & HH International

Cafe Society
1

I love this program.

  1. What I love most about it is observing the interaction between partners while they are house hunting. Are they dismissive of each other? Does one clearly dominate? Do they treat each other as loving peers?

  2. I am also fascinated by the cost of the houses they look at. When people buy homes for well over $1 million, how do they pay for them? Serious question.

Especially when they already have a main residence, and they buy a vacation home for well over $1-2 million… how (really) do people pay for that?

There was a family that had an estate somewhere near the east coast and they bought a vacation home somewhere in Florida (I think) for- I dunno- $2.5 million. I cannot wrap my brain around that. Do they pay cash? Do they liquidate the Coca-Cola stock that their grandpa left them? How do you even come up with monthly mortgage payments on TWO homes like that? Can someone explain?

  1. The other thing that KILLS me is when a couple walks into a perfectly decent kitchen and immediately, “Oh God, this is so DATED! We’re going to have to gut the whole thing!!” Maybe I’m just not picky enough. I don’t want granite countertops or stainless steel appliances-- not if EVERYONE ELSE has them. Geez…

Anyway, it’s endlessly fascinating to watch the process.

2

Is this the show where they narrow the field down to 3 properties, run a commercial, after that, they reveal which property the couple chose?

Did you see the married with several kids episode where they were purchasing a second home on a Pacific island ? I think it was Fiji.
It was a hugely expensive home, with a huge pool.
How these people afford a second home where they must fly an entire every time they want to go to their home … is beyond me.
I’ve enjoyed that show from time to time.
I usually guess incorrectly when it comes to their choice.

Have you noticed that they usually look at properties that are not staged with furniture? I wonder why that is. Most homes are staged now-days.

The million dollar homes are a huge tax burden as well as the monthly nut they have to shell out.

Anyway, I’ve been tuning into HGTV recently, because we are putting our house on the market soon.

3

I know that the world economy is thrashed right now, but there are people who actually do have that kind of disposable income. Not me, mind you:(

I know a trustafarian who has an income of about 50K $US a year, doesn’t work, all he does is sit around and play MMORPGs and platform games. Whatever floats his boat. I have no idea what he will do when the economy moves to where that isnt enough to pay his rent and food and gaming bill, but he seems happy being a slacker gamer.:smiley:

4

The not-staged/bare home is often the one that they buy. I read somewhere that the house they choose is already in escrow when the episode is filmed, so the previous owners will already have their stuff moved out.

I have no clue how people afford a pricey residence and a pricey vacation property. They might not keep them for long. After all, somebody is selling what they’re looking at.

I don’t spend much time wondering about the couple’s relationship. Usually one of them is so obnoxious, I turn off the sound and just look at the houses. Did that last night with the Panama repeat. The husband was awful.

I swear, some of these people must be told what to say. I have yet to see an episode where they didn’t mention stainless, granite, open floor plan, natural light, molding, man cave, and a wife saying “this closet is big enough for me but where will you put your clothes?”

The international buyers aren’t nearly as obnoxious as the Americans.

5

Not only do they seem very scripted* (“light and airy!!!”)*, I think I read that the buyers have already selected a place, but they go thru the motions of looking at 2 others for the show. Or maybe I dreamed that.

What really ticks me off is the whining that a 3 bedroom home isn’t big enough for a couple and their 2 kids with one on the way. Dammit, I lived in a 3 bedroom, 1 bath row house, 1000 sq feet, and there were SEVEN of us!! I didn’t have a room of my own till I got my first apartment! People, your children will not turn into ranting psychos if they don’t have a room of their own!!! :mad: :smack: :stuck_out_tongue:

Sorry. I’m better now… :smiley:

Seriously, the whining about the sizes of bathrooms and bedrooms is sometimes a bit much. Criminy, you need space for a bed, a dresser, a night stand with room to open the drawers and walk around. Your bedroom doesn’t have to be 400 sq ft to suffice! sheesh!

Yeah, the shows tick me off, but I still watch. Especially the multi-million dollar places - so that’s how the other half lives??

6

The part of the show I like best is when they come back some months later and show how the new owners have changed the place, especially when they bought a fixer-upper.

I thought the wife was just as obnoxious.

7

I like the ones set in cities like Chicago, Boston, or NYC when the buyer(s) are looking at vintage properties. I also like the HHI episodes where they go to cities in Europe or to Buenos Aires and go through those really old apartment/houses with bizarre floorplans and old fixtures. Or when the “houses” are basically ruins that practically need complete rebuilding

8

Or when they haven’t changed a single thing that they bitched about. The 70’s kitchen is still there, with the rooster wallpaper, and the bathroom is still Pepto-pink. :slight_smile:

He must have been obnoxious first, because I muted before she said anything. Which house did they pick? The budget-buster? I liked the second one, because of all the windows in the master bedroom.

It’s all relative. We went from a house built in the 20’s, with the original kitchen (we thought it was charming) to an 1890’s house, a plain old four-square. There are some popcorn ceilings (horrors!) and the kitchen is tiny, but it’s bigger than the 20’s house, and better insulated. It’d be a fixer-upper to a House Hunter, but we like it.

I like the vintage houses too. If the hunters are looking in a development, I’m only watching for the snark. They see a half-acre lot and bitch that the neighbors are too close. Unless you’re sunbathing in the nude, a half-acre should be plenty big.

I don’t get the need for huge master bedrooms either.

9

I love this show, too. Have been watching a while now.

If you want your mind blown re: money spent, watch Selling Manhattan. They’re selling two, three, sometimes five or ten million dollar properties. Usually primary residences, sometimes stuff for investors. On occasion they’ll do secondary residences in the Hamptons or Connecticut. The idea of spending five or ten million on a house and then living in Manhattan and buying an apartment there…it’s really mind blowing.

But I do love getting to see what other people’s houses/apartments look like.

I always think it’s horrifying when there’s a bathroom outside and they gush and say how nice and authentic it is. Bathing outside? For me, not gonna happen ever.

10

I’m sure it’s scripted because otherwise they’d have to waste a lot of film on stuff they’d never use. I know a few people who have enough money to buy a second $1M home, but not many.

I am intrigued by housing prices. It’s amazing that $700M in California or Montreal would get you a small crackerjack sized home, while it got an ocean-front 5000 square foot, fully furnished home in Nicaragua. :slight_smile:

So far, the only two places we could personally afford a second home (if we wanted) have been Turkey and the countryside of Italy – provided we didn’t mind having a home that had birds currently roosting inside the main home.

11

A universal requirement seems to be “a place to sit and have my coffee in the morning.”
I love the international ones that go to unfamiliar places, like the guy who bought a home in Croatia. He had a job where he constantly flew all over Europe, and he bought in a darling little village of ~600. But when he referred to “shops and restaurants”…? Where I live, a town of 600 will likely have a gas station and a Dairy Queen.

12

I enjoy this show too. I know it’s probably not as candid as it seems, that doesn’t bother me. I like seeing inside houses, especially in places I’m not going to get to any time soon.

I am most stunned by people buying huge homes. How many bathrooms, now? My first thought is always, “I’m not cleaning that many bathrooms!”

I also enjoy the dynamic between the couples. Am amazed at how many people simply ‘must’ have granite countertops and stainless appliances, brand new bathrooms etc. Especially in vacation homes. Me, I’ll be at the beach. I just need a little bungalow with a seaview and a hammock. Outdoor bathroom, in the tropics, no worries, I’m right there.

I enjoy it because I get to see something I would otherwise never get to see. Apartments in Paris, chalets in Croatia, country homes in Britain, etc.

13

Like to watch, don’t like the a-holes. You’d think that someone (spouse, family, producer) would clue them in that “Hey, this is going to be on TV, so be on your best behavior”. So keeping that in mind, when I see someone being a stupid dismissive jerk, I gotta consider that this IS their best behavior, and that they are ten times worse in person.

Otherwise, one of my hobbies is looking at properties. I used to go to open houses a couple of times a year, now I just indulge with real estate web sites and tv shows like this.

14

Well, I suppose if these people are anything like your typical upper-middle-class Americans, they probably have a lot of shit they want to stuff into the master bedroom - a king-sized bed with a big ass canopy and head board, dresser, extra chest of drawers, entertainment center, a nightstand or two, a trunk at the foot of the bed, maybe a writing desk.

15

I have to say, I take some kind of perverse pleasure in watching the truly obnoxious, demanding people. Like the ones who look at a million-dollar vacation home and say, “Well, it’s not the kitchen of my dreams…” There was a lady the other day who kept raising the bar higher and higher and finally the agent said, “We’re going to have a hard time finding what you want in your price range!” You got the impression he wanted to lock her in one of those too-small closets and go off and leave her there.

There was a 25-year old guy several years ago who was a real party animal and he was looking for an apartment in downtown Madrid (that his parents were going to buy for him!) where he could enjoy the night life. Finally, he found the outrageously expensive, but charming apartment he wanted, and when they did the re-visit at the end, he had gutted the whole interior, and now it was this stainless steel, black and gray, super-slick bachelor pad . Ugh. :frowning:

There was a lesbian couple who bought a huge, beautiful apartment in Sweden with those porcelain stoves that run up to the ceiling. The apartment had giant windows and many charming vintage features- that they left alone!

It seems to me that generally the gay male couples are particularly loving and cordial to each other. They seem more like peers than many (not all) of the hetero couples. The hetero military couples also seem very loving and supportive- I guess from having plenty of experience moving.

There was one gay couple where one guy was sort of cool and detached and the other seemed to be a real hothead. EVERY house they looked at, the hothead voiced many loud objections- this didn’t work, this was dated, have to pull out every cabinet in here and gut the place! He seemed so domineering and used to getting his way. He was always shouting down the cool one. But they wound up in the house that the cool one wanted. This made me think (and maybe I’m reading too much into this) that the cool one understood that the hothead needed to blow off steam, rant and rave, but they both knew that the cool one was level-headed and probably capable of making the more rational decision of the pair.

One that really sticks in my mind was a couple where the guy was white-haired (probably in his late 60’s) and the wife was Asian, and they had two little girls about four years old. They were looking for a vacation home on some island. I don’t remember how big the house was that they wound up with… maybe 8,000 sq. ft?.. but it was enormous, and cost a couple of million. There was a lower level family room that alone was probably 2,000 sq. ft. and it was wall-to-wall with the girls’ toys and Barbies. The really odd thing was that they had a live-in maid, also Asian, and the maid was the WIFE’S SISTER. She referred to her as the maid, and in a scene at the end, the wife was showing her how to operate the dishwasher.

What I like best is the peek into other people’s lives that are so different from mine. About five percent I think, “I’d like their lifestyle,” but the other 95 percent I just stare at and shake my head.

16

Maybe they hire housecleaners. Or they don’t even use all those bathrooms. And we never hear them discuss property taxes or what it’ll cost to heat/cool those huge homes.

It’d be interesting to see how many of those people are still in those huge homes four or five years later.

Something else that’s interesting is what constitutes a “view”. I think of a view as scenery, lots of open space, or a downtown skyline. Some buyers are happy with a glimpse of sky over some rooftops.

One buyer this week didn’t like a house because there was a hard floor and some sharp angles in a really nice and large finished basement. She was worried that her kids would get hurt if they ran into a column or fell down. :confused: It made me think she was asked to find something to complain about.

17

Yeah, this thing about how we can’t have stairs or a pool, because it’s dangerous for the kids. You can always lock the kids in that big walk-in closet and shove their meals under the door.

BTW, aren’t those kids going to get bigger?
I don’t think the people are asked to find something to complain about… I think they ARE that picky and obnoxious! (I guess that’s just the romantic in me.)

18

I watch it at my moms house, she has alzheimers and cant really track storylines long enough to watch a whole movie or even a tv show, so she will watch game shows, Dr Phil and stuff on H&G channels.

I can remember this lovely gay couple looking at places in the Greek Islands, I think- it was last year =) They looked at a place that was built on a hillside, literally each room was stacked above and slightly off to one side of the room below it. They also looked at a little ‘row house’ cottage with a miniscule front yard. I think the entire yard was perhaps 5 meters by 5 meters, and the house behind it was also probably 3 5x5 rooms as well.

Why do the nice gay guys always go for the cute cozy little places and the hetero couples go for huge wasteful spaces? I like cute and snug [though now i need wheelchair space around stuff, and a kitchen that can be modified for chair use]

My idea of the ultimate place would actually be coastal new england down through virginia - chesapeake bay inland side would be just fine for me. Beach would be nice, and enough land, about 3 acres - have a large garden for food, small orchard of trees and bushes for fruits, and space for a large poultry run. I dont need it near a city, moderate town is ok for grocery shopping, doctors and hospitals.

19

Yeah, it does get rather absurd seeing a 20’x25’ master bedroom and then hearing one of them whine about how it is “too small”. Or there is a 200’ wide grass strip between the condo and the beach and someone whines about how it isn’t directly on the beach. (Probably the same kind of moron who would call 911 (if it was the US) and demand that something be done about the 20’ waves crashing into their house during a tropical storm.)

“I paid good money for this house and I pay a lot in taxes! You people are going to come down here and do something about these waves!”

20

Same here, but I think it’s different in parts of Europe – fewer cars, more walking and bicycling. Seems like small shops and restaurants would have a built-in (captive) customer base.

My little town (pop. 200) has a cafe and a bar, and I’d probably patronize them more often but it’s too easy to drive to better places 10 miles down the road.

aruvqan, that does sound ideal. There’s a place like that in a nearby town. Little cottage-style house on about an acre at the edge of town, a small orchard, a chicken house, peony bushes lining the driveway, rose bushes along the fence. It was totally charming.