Huffington Post was the first to draw the attention of the media upon the authenticity of the show “House Hunters”. The declaration that a woman made after taking part at the HGTV series caused a scandal because the former participant claims the show is fake.
Bobi and her family became famous after featuring in one of the episodes of “House Hunters”. The declarations she made at the end of the show raised a lot of questions in relation to what is real and what is fake on the show. According to Bobi, most of the events on the show are staged.
The woman wrote on the blog Hooked on Houses that the producers of the show did not accept her and her family as participants until they closed the deal for the house they were planning to buy. The shocking news didn’t stop here: Bobi also revealed that most of the houses they had visited during the filming weren’t even for sale. The producers convinced her friends to allow them to visit their houses and pretend they were interested in buying them.
Bobi, nevertheless, explained that producers were constrained to film in her friends’ homes because real estate agents didn’t want them to show footage of their houses. She further added that some of the realtors were afraid that the show might put their properties in a bad light.
HGTV released a statement in response to Bobi’s declarations. They told the press that the 30-minute format of the show obliges them to resort to certain “tricks”. In their opinion, the decisional process preceding the purchase of a house is usually too long and too difficult for producers to be able to place it on the show. As a consequence, they prefer to choose families that have already chosen the homes they want to buy and ask them to repeat the whole process again. Thus, even though they don’t visit the same houses, the show is genuine because the characters relive the experience they had been through before they bought the house. In addition, viewers get to learn useful things about establishing budgets, about touring properties and weighing the pros and cons of each one.
