I've seen a few episodes of "buy me", but never seen one that was in the US. I thought they were just in Canada. Did they start making a US show?

I believe they have started making US shows. I saw a Denver episode recently.

It's interesting how stubborn some homeowners are about pricing and/or fixups before selling. Makes you feel sorry for some of the RE agents who have to deal with them! Eventually they seem to end up right where the agent told them they should be to begin with, LOL.

There have been posts about these shows. Despite the glossy look and feel of a realty tv show, these shows are for entertainment purposes only and often what comes across as factual, is anything but. I vaguely remember someone who did a similar show and said that almost everything, including the "buyers" was staged.
Watch it with a grain of salt.
Jo

I remember that post also, Jo. Even watched his episode on "Designed To Sell". He said the "buyers" were actually his neighbors. And, at the end of the show he & his wife announced their house sold but, in reality, they had pulled it from the market because he was quite seriously ill & ended up hospitalized for a long period of time.

/tricia

I watch that show, and saw that episode. "Buy Me" is much more realistic than a lot of the other shows, and many cases at the end the announcer says that the seller refused to make the necessary repairs or lower the price or whatever, and the house never sold, and their buyer instead bought the house down the street.

It's surprising to me to see the number of sellers who just refuse to listen to their realtors, whether it's on decluttering or pricing or being reasonable about counteroffers.

But in this case, it was the *realtor* who set the impossibly high price. She had just moved there from Los Angeles and thought the housing prices should be higher. (I understand, I just moved from SoCal and was pleasantly surprised at prices in another state.)

But - her whole point was that she, personally, was going to start driving the prices up in that area, just by setting high selling prices.

What RE training did she get? Why did she think that would work? She looked like a blooming idiot.

She actually went door to door in that neighborhood and told people that she could sell their house for $$$$. And found this one couple who was wanting to move, and they fell for it. Kept her on for 9 months, then when the contract expired went with another realtor and sold the house in two weeks, at a more reasonable price.

I think that would definitely qualify as negative publicity for her.

jojoco, that post was about "House Hunters" but I bet it applies to quite a few of their shows. I actually stopped watching it, because I prefer my reality shows to be, well, real. I also stopped watching Man vs Wild after reading that Bear slept in a hotel, not on the beach, on the Hawaii episode. :P

Minet - listing was for 9 months? I missed that. What I find interesting is that they had an offer for $425k with that agent, but turned it down. They sold with a new agent within 10 days for the same price.

I'm glad they are finally doing episodes in the US. I saw one in Denver, another in Raleigh. That owner has several offers and then a few went into a bidding war. She sold well above her listing price.

Anyone see the episode with the doll lady? She had hundreds of dolls all over the house. It was so creepy.

The other thing that bothered me about that episode.....I guess the sellers were moving because they had to downsize, since they had bought their current house on impulse with $0 down, overextended themselves, and now find they are really stretching to make their payments, can't put anything away for kids' college funds, etc. So when they start looking at smaller homes within their budget to buy, they started carrying on about how "we're not just downsizing, we're downgrading", "how depressing", etc, etc. Yeah, living within your means is so depressing and degrading, boo hoo. So I think both the realtor and the sellers made themselves look like idiots in this one.

It's interesting how stubborn some homeowners are about pricing and/or fixups before selling. Makes you feel sorry for some of the RE agents who have to deal with them! Eventually they seem to end up right where the agent told them they should be to begin with, LOL.

It wasn't the buyers, it was the realtor who convinced them of the unrealistic price.

Buy Me is a Canadian show, but I noticed a few eps are now in the US. Perhaps they have a contract to do some US shows. It is still filming in Canada, so maybe they are doing both sides of the border.

There's also another Canadian show on HGTV USA called Property Virgins. A realtor helps first timers realistically buy their first home. It focusses on the process more than "My First Place" does.

>>It's interesting how stubborn some homeowners are about pricing and/or fixups before selling. Makes you feel sorry for some of the RE agents who have to deal with them!
Eventually they seem to end up right where the agent told them they should be to begin with, LOL.

It wasn't the buyers, it was the realtor who convinced them of the unrealistic price. Actually, I wasn't talking about any specific episode of "Buy Me," at least not the one the OP was referring to. I never saw that particular one, and have only caught a couple of episodes overall when I was channel-surfing.

The one I was thinking of with the stubborn homeowner was the middle-aged woman who divorced and became a professional weightlifter. She was adamant she was not going to take less than $1M for her home, even though the realtor tried to convince her the market would only support a $900K price. She had a leaking second-floor porch, as I recall, although most of the house was in decent shape.

It wasn't until she bought another house that she was finally persuaded to drop her price enough to even get any showings. Can't remember the exact price she sold for, but I think it was somewhere around $875K. She could have saved herself six months worth of trouble if she'd just taken her realtor's advice to begin with.

I've watched it a few times and although it was interesting to see the personality dynamics, I found it hard to believe the parties involved (usually the homeowners) had such attitudes. If those were for real, they were almost laughable. Often they were holding mortgages on two properties and desperate, and I'd wager they talked the house price as much down on their new homes as they did up on their old ones. Jeckyl and Hyde. LOL.

Years ago when my husband and I started looking at properties near where we wanted to settle, we did look at a house in a tiny village and it stank. Literally. They had massive sewerage problems. I wasn't interested in tying into that one with septics involved, but questioned the owners how they could justify their price when it was obvious they had some major issues their buyers would have to repair at great expense.

I got this point blank look then the reply that "This is what we NEED to get out of our home, nothing less in order for us to buy the home we want" I just wanted to say DUH, good luck. Maybe I did. That was their problem, not a buyer's.