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Trying to Keep TV Appeal as Housing Reality Sets In
Shannon McCleod, Michael Wegmann, Ray Schuldenfrei, Dia Schuldenfrei and Chase Campen are on “Million Dollar Listing.”
By JEREMY W. PETERS
If “Million Dollar Listing” had a disclaimer at the beginning of each episode, it might read something like this: The scenes depicted in this television show were filmed at the height of an overheated real estate market. They are not reflective of current economic conditions.
Consider the following scene from the program. A Hollywood real estate agent, Ray Schuldenfrei, implores his wife and business partner, Dia, to list a two-bedroom Hollywood Hills home for $949,000 — about $25,000 higher than she thinks is fair. “This is a crazy market right now. People aren’t buying from here,” he says, pointing to his head. He then taps his chest. “They’re buying from here.”
“Million Dollar Listing,” which has its season finale tonight on Bravo, is one of several reality shows — others include “House Hunters” on HGTV and “Flip This House” on A&E — that base much of their drama on a frenetic pace of home-buying and selling. Yet these programs are being broadcast on television as the real estate boom they depict is a fading memory. Instead of the old adage “location, location, location,” a more appropriate maxim for these reality shows might be “timing, timing, timing.”
“It was hot, hot, hot,” Mrs. Schuldenfrei said last week, reflecting fondly on the Southern California boom days. “All you had to do was put a sign up.”
Mr. Schuldenfrei, in a rare moment of agreement with his wife, added: “It was complete bliss.” (In one episode, he was so confident about the market that he told a client to arbitrarily pick a number. “Are you into numerology?” he asked.)
Without a white-hot market to drive the plot, the producers of “Million Dollar Listing” and other shows about real estate now have to rethink their formats. And a handful of real estate agents may start to wonder whether their careers as reality TV stars are over.
Lauren Zalaznick, Bravo’s president, said she could see “Million Dollar Listing” working regardless of the pace of the housing market. “One of the beauties of this show is that in a down market or in an up market, there’s interesting stories to be told,” Ms. Zalaznick said. “Whatever the market forces literally dictate is what’s going to appear on camera.”
Bravo has not decided whether it will renew “Million Dollar Listing” for a second season, but “we think there’s a long life for it,” she said.
The show is among the network’s most popular, drawing about a third more viewers than the Bravo’s average audience in the 8 to 11 p.m. time slot, the network said.
Bravo has only one real estate show to worry about. HGTV has an entire series. In May it kicked off a block of programming it called “Property Buzz,” which included no fewer than six programs about buying and selling homes, among them “House Hunters.”
“People ask me all the time, aren’t you worried now that you have all these shows about property?” said Michael Dingley, HDTV’s senior vice president for programming and content strategy. “The answer is no.”
“House Hunters,” which is seen weeknights, follows couples looking for a home. Nervous newlyweds fret about the price. Couples weigh the give-and-take of house shopping. Do they go for the one with the better schools or the one with the bigger yard? In every episode, it seems, a husband cracks a joke about whether the closet is big enough to accommodate his wife’s shoes.
At the end of the show, after the couple has toured three houses and the viewer is treated to some revealing financial information about what the buyers can and cannot afford, we find out which house they bought.
Mr. Dingley said curiosity would compel people to watch the program..
“It’s very voyeuristic,” he said. “It’s like when people go to parties and open the medicine cabinet.”
A&E is equally unmoved by the swings of the housing market. The network is pushing ahead with plans for a third season of “Flip This House,” which follows investors who buy homes, renovate them and try to flip them at a profit. New episodes broadcast on Sunday nights.
The investors give a step-by-step narrative, from the purchase to the sweaty demolition, and then all the way to the bank. One investor regularly featured this season is Sam Leccima, an Atlanta businessman with a penchant for expensive cigars. He and his wife, Shani, supervise the business affairs while the construction crew, led by Lamont Martin, a wise-cracking handyman who is prone to randomly breaking into song, do the remodeling.
In one episode, Mr. Leccima offered some advice for anyone looking to be a successful house flipper. “Cat urine and feces: great signs of a place that’s going to make you money,” he declared, standing outside a dilapidated Atlanta home he bought for $92,000, spent $12,000 renovating and later sold for $144,000.
With confidence that in this market could come only from a real estate investor whose business has the platform of a reality show to increase sales, Mr. Leccima said last week, “Real estate works off a wonderful pendulum. As soon as it goes down, you can expect it will go back up.”
