House Hunters and House Hunters International Are Fake! Former Show Participants Come Forward with Details.

We all know that reality TV most of the time isn’t really all that real, or do we?

House Hunters, a show that has been on the Air since 1999 is being exposed as fake!

On House Hunters the camera follows perspective home buyers as they look at 3 houses and then choose which house they are going to purchase. Simple straight forward, and often interesting to viewers especially if you are in the market for a house or selling your own home.

A former participant Bobi Jensen has revealed that the producers of the show would not finalize her as a contestant until she already paid and purchased one of the houses.  She also explains that the other two houses that were shown sometimes are not really for sale, in fact in her case, they were homes of her close friends.  They were never really available for her to buy.

Jensen went on to explain,

“Friends whose houses we toured were in the midst of working towards life changes (job promotions, out-of-state moves) and both thought they might be selling in the next few years — so it wasn’t such a far stretch for them to want theirs featured.” In fact, One actually went on the market and sold before the show aired.”

“I’d like to make clear that I love HGTV!”

A participant of House Hunters International, which is an extension of the House Hunters franchise also confirmed that he purchased the house before filming.  Ted Prosser who purchased a Virgin Island home said,

‘The show is not really a reality show.’

The show is also accused of skewing the storylines to make them more intriguing and relate-able to the audience.  When Mrs. Jensen took part in the show she told producers that she wanted their existing house to be turned into a rental, therefore she would like to purchase another home.  When her episode aired, she was surprised to learn that her story was changed.  Supposedly she wanted to purchase a house because her family was out growing her current one.  The producers said that the later storyline was more “TV Friendly”.

HOUSE HUNTERS DOES NOT DENY THE CLAIMS!

HGTV’s director of programming Brian Balthazar basically says, “Yeah, that’s what we do.”  He told TODAY.com

‘To maximize production time, we seek out families who are pretty far along in the process.

‘Often everything moves much more quickly than we can anticipate, so we go back and revisit some of the homes that the family has already seen and we capture their authentic reactions.’

He goes on to explain that purchasing a home is such a big deal, that the reactions you get the 2^nd time around are very similar to the initial reactions thus, still makes good TV.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Some fans were not buying the excuse at all, and some like myself don’t really mind.  I think these are the kinds of liberties that are taken to pull off a good show.  I’m sure the process has evolved since 1999.  I would assume that completing the purchase of a house before was not an initial prerequisite but after getting burnt a few times, they made some changes.  It could also be a way of weeding out those who are not really that serious about buying a home to begin with.

What Bobbi Jensen also says, that some news stories are leaving out is that the participants are required to find the homes for sale, but in her case she couldn’t so they ended up using homes that were not for sale.  She explains how in Texas they just couldn’t find homes that wanted to be on the show,

“I think they were afraid we’d show their house in a bad light, Plus, the San Antonio real estate market was bustling at that time and no one needed free advertising . . . especially when the episode wouldn’t air for six more months.”

In regards to changing backstories, I think making backstories more TV friendly is ok as well.  Reality TV is scripted TV with amateur actors.  People take it way too personally, and at the end of the day it’s entertainment.

If you find out that your Local News show is fake, then it’s time to get pissed. Until then, just relax and enjoy. It’s not really that serious.