House Hunters has been a consistent success for HGTV, a huge contributor to real estate reality TV, which has given us our favorite homebuilder couples. But in the last few years, former stars have revealed that it’s all fake like Fixer Upper‘s scripted scenes. Apparently, most of its stars have also already bought a house by the time they’re cast. Producers just stage their homes to make it seem like they’re still viewing their options.

The show’s publicist denied the accusations, saying that they “seek out families who are pretty far along the process” and “revisit some of the homes that the families had already seen” to film their “authentic reactions.” Ironically, the series continues to get high ratings because of its “reliability”, like the network’s legitimate historic property renovation show, Home Town. Here’s what’s really going on behind the scenes of House Hunters.

How House Hunters Cast People Who Are No Longer Looking For A New Home

House Hunters Stage Homeowners’ Houses To Film Fake Viewings

In 2023, a homeowner revealed that House Hunters contacted her despite knowing she’d already found a home. “I purchased my home in upstate New York in 2012,” she told House Beautiful, “and my real estate agent, who was a knows-everybody kind of guy, was like, ‘Oh, I know someone at House Hunters, and they’re always looking for people. Would you wanna do it?’ And I was like, ‘Sure, why not? Sounds fun.'”

It was obviously not the first time the show had a case like that. “They were like, ‘Yeah, that’s no problem. We’re going to find two other homes, and then we’ll just record you looking at all of them as if it was your first time seeing all these places, including the home that you live in,” said the homeowner, who ended up not doing the show.

In a Reddit post, another person said they’d already been living in their home for six months when their realtor was contacted by House Hunters. They were then asked to view two other homes on the show — both of which weren’t for sale either. “My family and I were on an episode of HGTV’s House Hunters… In reality the entire thing was staged,” they wrote. “Like literally every detail.”

They added: We had already owned the home for six months when our realtor was contacted by HGTV. Neither of the other two homes were even for sale. Every scene was shot several times. The ‘three month’ follow-up just showed us in different clothes in our actual home and was shot the same weekend… Bizarre experience. I haven’t been able to look at reality TV the same way since!”

Some Homeowners Don’t Find The Salary From House Hunters Worth Faking It

Most Stars Join House Hunters Because They Love The Show

The first homeowner backed out of the show because she needed to film for two days, for which she was offered $500. “I just felt very busy and taking off for, you know, kind of a fictitious story didn’t seem worth it to me,” she said. She could care less about the series being fake. She was willing to do it as a fan of the show. It’s likely the reason many people continue to join despite knowing it’s all staged.

“I remember thinking I was less appalled by the idea that it was fake,” the homeowner said of that time. “It didn’t matter. I just liked watching the show.”

What’s funny is that the show was so unscripted when it first came out, that its first-ever stars wished it was. When asked how scripted House Hunters was, Mitch Englander told Vice in 2019: “Zero. Absolutely nothing. That was the whole problem. Looking back, I wish it were a little scripted.”

Mitch and his wife Jayne appeared on the show’s first episode while they were expecting their second child. “It was a disastrous timing,” Mitch remembered. It didn’t help that the show “had no idea what they wanted. Not only was there no script, they didn’t know what angles they wanted or what they wanted us to look at. It was all raw and very fresh.”

The first-ever House Hunters stars were also not paid. “They pay the buyers $500? No! We didn’t get a dime,” Mitch said. “We didn’t get a thank you card at the time. We didn’t get anything… We don’t get any royalties off of it.” Seriously, there has to be some kind of reality TV justice for the Englanders. But looking back, Mitch said they “did it for fun, and it was experiential.”

House Hunters Continues To Draw Viewers Because It’s A “Reliable Fantasy”

House Hunters Maintain High Ratings Because Of Its “Safe Predictability”

In 2019, the Washington Post published an article titled, “For 20 years, House Hunters has been reliable reality TV. For millennials, it feels more like a fantasy.” It’s an easy, fell-good watch. Every episode, which lasts 22 minutes, takes viewers to the following steps:

• A home buyer, usually a couple with interesting careers, looks for a new place that matches their needs and budget.
• Their local real estate agent shows them three houses.
• They pick the right one for them. It’s a sure happy ending.

It doesn’t have the often unnecessary drama of other real estate reality shows like Netflix‘s Selling Sunset, Owning Manhattan, and the recently canceled Buying Beverly Hills. “It is an opportunity to spend low-stakes time peeking into other people’s domestic lives,” Shawn Shimpach wrote of House Hunter‘s formula in the academic article, “Realty Reality: HGTV and the Subprime Crisis.”

Shimpach added that “there’s some appeal in seeing how they interact with each other, how they interact with a [real estate agent] and the kinds of values they have when they’re looking for homes.”

According to the University of Massachusetts professor, the viewers “play along by deciding, which would I choose? And so, am I like these people, or am I different from these people?” But the show has its dark side. The reason it’s a millennial’s fantasy has a lot to do with the Great Recession, for which Time blamed Burton Jablin, who led HGTV’s then-parent company, Scripps Networks.

In the 2009 list called, “25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis,” the magazine claimed that “HGTV and other lifestyle channels, helped inflate the real estate bubble by teaching viewers how to extract value from their homes.” Indeed, most current fans of House Hunters (millennials and Gen Zers) can only dream of having the beautiful properties on the show. And in this economy, it is a much-needed escape from reality.