Homes and Garden Opening

Check out this opening title sequence from Homes & Garden from 1998.

That was a gardening flashback and as the song says ... things are always getting better all the time.

Of course today's opening TV titles are probably going to be looking a little silly in 20 years as well.

Mike Holmes Special in Cali

I watched a bit of the 2 hour Mike Holmes special in California last night. It was an old show which I had not seen before and the program info says that it was sponsored by the Ellen show and the DIY network.

In any event these home owners had been taken by a contractor for $204,000 and had been left with what looked to be a wooden shack. Mike Holmes came down to California to fix this home and we all learned a bit about the local building code, designed to handle earthquakes.

It's been slow lately

We have had some great weather locally so I've been spending a lot of time outside enjoying it.

This has of course had an impact on my watching of Real Estate TV & Video. However my PVR is full and I expect to be able to watch some shows in the next little while as we are now expecting a bit of rain. So I'm hoping to be able to push out some blog post on home shows in the next few days.

Until then, I hope your having great weather as well.

House Hunters Denmark to St. Lucia

It's been awhile since I saw this show of House Hunters International, but since I went to St. Lucia on holidays a few years back I wanted to make sure I covered this amazing island!

In this show we follow a couple moving from Denmark and have a great budget.

There options are:

1) 1 millions for a condo with 2 bedrooms in a resort.
2) 1.6 million for a nice home on a hill with a great view, but not near the water.
3) 1.7 million for a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom with 2,500 feet of room and a great location but it was a major fixer upper.

In the end they choice option number #2 with it's 3,000 feet of room, 4 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms and it's great view of the Pitons.

Holmes Inspection - Roof Issues

I watched another Holmes Inspection show. It's amazing to see what a home inspector can miss but what a home builder like Mike Holmes can find just by looking at the home.

In this case the big issues start with the front of the house with 4 layers of shingles rotting out the front roof. While in the back of the house there was a large flat roof that didn't have the proper finishing coat.

Interesting enough, it seems that the prior home owners rushed the home inspection because they were having a dinner party thus cutting the inspection down from 2.5 hours to 1.

If I ever hear that line I'm going to look twice as long and be ready to run away from the house.

BUY HERSELF

Finally figures out what the name of Sandra's new show is. It's called BUY HERSELF. As you recall from my prior post, she has left Property Virgins to start this show.

Selling Spelling

I saw the first show of what should be a short TV series on Selling Spelling Manor this past weekend.

The show is covering the sale of one house. What makes a mini-series out of selling this house is that it's being offered for sale a $150 million!!

In this first show we learned the history of the home. It located on the site of the former Bring Crosby estate which was ripped down to build this monster of a home over nearly a decade of construction!

Should be interesting to watch this one, wonder what they'll get for it.

New Show for Sandra

I saw an ad this past weekend on HGTV for a new real estate tv show. What made this one exciting was that the host was Sandra from Property Virgins. Looks like she gave up hosting Property Virgins and all of the travel associated with it for the new show.

This show is called Her Estate or something similar and it seems to be focused on helping female home buyers! Looks like a good show and an interesting spin on home selling TV.

NY to Melbourne

I learned that real estate and homes are expensive in Melbourne. In this show of house hunters international we covered a family moving from NY to Melbourne. The most important thing to the wife was a home with a pool.

But in the end for 900k they purchased a nice home, next door to a beekeeper and his bee hives. Not a place I'd want to be swimming!

A Rental in Rome

House hunters international and it was covering a single woman moving from America to Rome.

The home hunter taking a new job in downtown Rome, (which appeared to be teaching english) and she had a small rental subsidy from her employer. So this ended up being a rental search and not buying a home.

The problem was that the rental rates are out of this world. She had a budget of $5,000 a month but the homes we saw where $6,500 , $6,500 and $7,500!

The location looked exciting but she was not getting a palace for that price. In the end her REALTOR® was able to get the price of the property down towards the affordable $5,000 level and she got a great place to live.

Expensive Homes in London

House hunters international again yesterday and this time instead of showing a big move it was expensive real estate in London.

The home buyer was more of an investor and was looking to buy property in the 1.2 million dollar range in the Hyde Park area of London.

Well it seems that you cannot get much for 1.2 million in London, it's an expensive city.

The options we had where:

1. A nice sized home that needed major work because the prior owner died in the middle of renovating it for 1.2 million.

2. A small, narrow home in a unique location for 1.23 million or

3. A nice, fully upgraded and complete home for 1.7 million.

I think in this one the choice of pretty clear the investor picked home number 1 and was able to purchase it for "only" 800,000!  After some good rennovations the show indicated it was now worth more than twice that amount!

Takes money to make money!

Toronto to Mexico

Another show of House Hunters international I watched last night was covering a couple moving from Toronto to Mexico. Except that they were not really moving from Toronto, it seem that they were just staying there for a bit after spending the last 3 years living in a 300 square foot apartment in Japan.

The home buyers were looking for a luxury villa in the 200k range, and amazingly they had several very nice options. All with personal sized pools in their backyard.

In the end they ended up purchasing a home for over their price range for 220k. But it was clearly the best of the lot.

House Hunters - Cincinnati

Well house hunters covered home buyers looking in Cincinati last night. Personnally my only experience with Cincinati to date was watching the old classic TV show WKRP.

However, the city seemed very nice from what I saw and real estate pricing seemed to be very reasonable.

This episode covered a young couple looking to buy their first home. Of the three homes we saw my guess was that they would be buying number 3.

I though that the 3rd home was the best fit being a bit bigger than the rest despite the lack of privacy due to it backing onto a high school.

However, in the end they picked home number 1 which must have been in a better area of town.

Denver Real Estate Video

It's been awhile since I covered the Denver real estate show. But I hate to miss to a market so I'm presenting the following REALTOR video of a home currently for sale on MLS in that market.

This home is in the Washington Park area of Denver with 4 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms. At almost $1.3 million asking price for this property I'd say that the real estate market in Denver must be pretty expensive!

What I liked about this video is that it showed a good number of photos expanding into the room getting larger. Unlike a lot of videos that we see that just move by focusing in on an area.

London to the South of Spain

Well this House Hunters International show was fairly unique. It followed the same formula with a home buyer moving from London to the south of Spain. What made this interesting however was that the buyer had a price point in the mid $550k range and that they were looking for something in the country that was very isolated.

Isolated means that you end up owning lots of land all around you! This was not about buying a small unit in a city.

The views of 3 of the homes we saw where amazing! In the end the home buyer purchased a house in the middle of know where but in a classic spain lay out. Lots of room to expand if they needed!

House Hunter St Louis

I've been to St Louis a long long time ago so it was very nice to see a city that I've been to on House Hunters. Always makes it interesting as you try to see if you recognize any of the locations and their seemed to be a few of them.

In this show of HH we had a couple looking to buy a home with older charm that had been updated. The price point was in the 200k to 300k range and their seemed to be a lot of options availalble at this very reasonable price point.

In the end the buyers picked the one home that seemed to meet all of their requirements but didn't seem to have the street appeal that the other ones had to me.

House Hunters Denver

Denver House Hunter was on this week.

Home buyer were looking in the $600k to $700k range. You can get some very nice homes for that price point in the Denver real estate market it seems.

A wide varity of house where offered to the buyers ranging from an older 70's style with lots of work required to a large fully updated palace.

In the end these home buyers wanted to do the work to tailor the house to their needs so they purchased the older 70's home.

Selling NY back for a 2nd Season

With the launch of Selling LA, I had expect that we had seen the end of Selling New York. I had expect that the series would go the way of the "Real House Wives" series and just keep moving from city to city.

But that doesn't seem to be the case at all, as I just saw an add for Selling New York Season 2. Looks like it is going to start next week.

I hope that they have adjusted the format and improved the show for the 2nd season.

Selling LA

A new real estate TV show started last week called Selling LA. I appears to be a spin off of Selling New York, except that it's in LA. Common to both shows is that it focuses on buying high end homes for the rich.

As I said before I wasn't a big fan of Selling New York since all of the real estate appeared to be very simliar apartment. With the LA spin off the homes are a lot more varied.

Hopefully we will be getting a lot of seasons of Selling LA!

London to Rio Brazil

House Hunters Internation last night! This show was about a man moving from London to Rio Brazil to live with his Brazlian girlfriend.

The home buyer had about $400k to spend and was looking for an older house that was in need of some serious repair that he could fix up over the next year.

Well, only the first house we saw met those fix up conditions, the other 2 where newer and in better shape. So there was no much drama in which home he would be purchasing.