Tag Archives: HGTV

Replacing the “master” in master bedroom

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The term master bedroom is falling out of favor in the Washington D.C. area:

A survey of 10 major Washington, D.C.-area homebuilders found that six no longer use the term “master” in their floor plans to describe the largest bedroom in the house. They have replaced it with “owner’s suite” or “owner’s bedroom” or, in one case, “mastre bedroom.”

Why? In large part for exactly the reason you would think: “Master” has connotation problems, in gender (it skews toward male) and race (the slave-master).

Enter the owner’s suite…

Winchester, Pulte Homes, NV Homes and Ryan Homes (both under the NVR Inc. umbrella), Van Metre Cos. and D.R. Horton Inc. have all replaced “master” in their floor plans, some more recently than others…

Over time, “master” will be filtered out entirely, he said. The change is “just working through the industry, and finally, bingo, we got it.”

Randy Creaser, owner of D.C.’s Creaser/O’Brien Architects PC, said he ditched “master” in the early 1990s in his home designs. He vaguely recalled a few lawsuits brought against builders over the phrase. Pulte spokeswoman Valerie Dolenga said Pulte made the shift maybe three or four years ago.

How long will it take to get through the entire industry? This clearly hasn’t reached HGTV yet…

Argument: fake “House Hunters” does a disservice to the realities of American homeownership

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Responding to the recent news that the HGTV show House Hunters may be fake, one writer suggests this does a disservice to the realities of American homeownership:

So what’s the problem? By now, the onus is on the viewer to consume all “reality television” with a chuckle and a grain of salt. The genre’s underlying appeal is often rooted in its escapist, aspirational qualities (or, at other end of the spectrum, its indulgence of our basest schadenfreude). But House Hunters was always much more about showing us an attainable reality than a fantasy. The show (and its many iterations), in which people just like us (juggling budgets, worried about school districts, pulled between city and suburb), go shopping for the best home their money can buy, not only glorifies the dream of home ownership, but makes it seem achievable. (If that IT guy and his elementary school teacher wife can successfully get out of their dingy apartment and into a new home with the requisite granite countertops, “marriage-saving” double vanities, and bedroom-sized walk-in closets, so can I!) This plays right into our inexplicably unwavering attachment to home ownership: Despite the collapse of the housing market, polling continues to demonstrate that we regard owning a home as the cornerstone of the American Dream—a perception that undoubtedly played a role in the home-buying craze prior to the bubble’s burst.

Showing houses that aren’t even for sale at prices divined by its producers, House Hunters is presenting dangerous misinformation about the home-buying process and deleting all of the accompanying complications and consequences. It’s turned what is actually a messy, frustrating, often dead-end process into a seamless (and perhaps necessary) path toward fulfillment. What’s more, it seems likely that viewers use the prices, locations, and home criteria discussed on the show as barometers for their own house hunts because the information is presented as fact. No, House Hunters does not explicitly condone selling one’s soul for a white picket fence, and other HGTV shows like My First Place and Property Virgins do delve into money and home-inspection woes from time to time. But doesn’t HGTV have some obligation to portray the housing market as it is, or, at the very least, offer a pronounced disclaimer about the producers’ creative and logistical liberties?

Maybe they could fix this whole mess and wipe the slate clean with a good old fashioned “where are they now” episode, showing us the truth after those mortgage payments start taking a toll.

So the main worry here is that House Hunters makes homeownership seem too easy and could lead too many people into more decisions? Perhaps we need an extra paragraph here extolling the virtues of renting…

I’m not sure what to make of this argument. Homeownership is indeed an American value. One could argue that HGTV itself stands as a giant beacon for homeownership and a consumerist lifestyle. Is this necessarily bad? Does HGTV simply reflect the interests Americans have or does it insidiously push people toward too much homeownership and consumption? Are impressionable kids and adults watching this channel and then going out and spending beyond their means? I don’t think we have the public data to examine this (though some marketing company may have this information).

In the end, I suppose it comes down to this: do you think HGTV has a moral/ethical/social obligation to also show the downsides of homeownership?

“House Hunters” not so real

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Several former participants in HGTV’s House Hunters say the story shown on TV isn’t exactly reality:

The premise of ‘House Hunters’ is that viewers follow a buyer as they anxiously decide between three different houses. Jensen says that, in fact, one house has already been purchased–the producers wouldn’t even finalize her as a subject until after the closing. “When I watch other episodes of the show now I can usually pick out the house they were getting based on hair-dos alone,” says Jensen. Houses are sometimes shot months apart. While the two rejected properties may be on the market, in Jensen’s case, “They were just our two friends’ houses who were nice enough to madly clean for days in preparation for the cameras!”

A former subject of the spin-off “House Hunters International” confirms that one house on the program has already been bought before filming begins. Ted Prosser, who did his real estate search in the Virgin Islands, said in an interview with a St. John blog: “The show is not really a reality show. You have to already own the house that gets picked at the end of the show. But the other houses in [my] show are actually the other houses we considered buying.”…

When confronted with Jensen’s allegations, a publicist for ‘House Hunters’ told Entertainment Weekly in a statement:

“We’ve learned that the pursuit of the perfect home involves big decisions that usually take place over a prolonged period of time – more time than we can capture in 30 minutes of television…. We’re making a television show, so we manage certain production and time constraints, while honoring the home buying process…. Showcasing three homes makes it easier for our audience to “play along” and guess which one the family will select. It’s part of the joy of the ‘House Hunters’ viewing experience. Through the lens of television, we can offer a uniquely satisfying and fun viewing experience that fulfills a universal need to occasionally step into someone else’s shoes.”

Is there any reality in reality TV? Seriously though, the “reality” shown on House Hunters would be cost prohibitive: how could a network afford (or justify) following a couple around as they see sometimes dozens of houses. I’m also a little surprised this information hasn’t come up before -participants must sign quite a contract.

I’ve noted before the popularity of HGTV shows. While the story of the couple on some of these shows is important, I wonder how much it really matters. Don’t people really want to see the different houses and options? You can’t have completely boring people on the show who like everything but at the same time, the real focus of these shows is the houses.

Comparing the size of new American homes to those in France, Spain, and Britain

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As the size of the average new American home dropped in recent years and then increased again in 2011, it is helpful to keep in mind how American homes compare to those in Europe:

By the way, even if American homes do shrink slightly, they’ll still be much bigger than homes abroad. A 2009 survey from Britain’s Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment found that the average new home built in the United States has twice the floor space of those built in France and Spain and is three times as large as the average new British home.Am

To put this in perspective, this means that the average new home in Britain is roughly 800 square feet and new homes in France and Spain are about 1,200 square feet. Is this what American exceptionalism looks like these days?

This reminds me of watching House Hunters International on HGTV. When you have an American looking to purchase a home in Europe, they often say they need space though the square footage or acreage is rarely quantified. In contrast, Europeans on the show seem to expect that European homes will be smaller and are willing to deal with it. You can often see quite a difference in expectations: Americans expect more personal space and distance between them and neighbors. This is not necessarily because Americans are unfriendly; one recent survey put the United States at the fifth most friendly country. Perhaps it could be tied to how much stuff Americans expect to have. Regardless, more Americans appear to relish the idea of having private space within the home in ways that is not possible or not wanted in other cultures.

 

Gated communities on HGTV

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As someone who studies suburbs and housing, I admit enjoying watching people choose homes on HGTV on shows like House Hunters. I’ve noticed that one factor that occasionally influences the choice of homes is whether it is located in a gated community. A few thoughts about this topic, gated communities, which has attracted more attention from sociologists and planner in the last two decades:

1. On these shows, the gated communities often pop up in the South or West, particularly in Florida or California.

2. We rarely see any evidence of the gated community like the entryway to the neighborhood (a fake guardhouse or a real guardhouse?)  or a fence around the entire neighborhood. We are simply told that the suburban home is in a gated community.

3.  At least when making their choices on screen, the people rarely talk much about the fact that a home is in a gated community. This is probably due to the fact that the show is supposed to be about the home and not the neighborhood. (So how about a new show where it is less about the individual housing unit and more about selecting a neighborhood?)

4. The homes in the gated communities vs. those that are not in a gated community look very similar. Ultimately, it is really rare that anyone on this show is selecting a home that is in a “unsafe neighborhood.” As sociologists have suggested, living in a gated community is often a decision made regarding some amorphous outside threat. They are devices that portray a certain image while also acting as reassurance for residents. As some have shown, like Setha Low in Behind the Gates, some suburban residents feel very afraid even when they live in exclusive, upscale neighborhoods. The gates in many neighborhoods don’t really keep people out but they help the residents feel better.