Real estate television shows: friend or foe?

I don’t care what some agents say, but I, for one, am super grateful for the proliferation of real estate TV. Like it or not, the world has gone mad for any program remotely related to hocking homes. Countless real estate shows are beamed into million of viewers homes 24/7. The public can’t get enough!

There are even whole networks, like HGTV & DIY, dedicated solely to our careers. The rise to domination of real(i)ty TV over the airwaves the past 10 years has absolutely changed the professional landscape for us agents.

A perfect example is last week when someone emailed me out of the blue after he & his wife saw me on HGTV‘s House Hunters. Now, as agents, we get contacted all the time from our ads, referrals, and our sphere of influence, right? Well, what is different about the leads who reach out to me from TV, versus other outlets, is that they are so well informed.

Avid real estate tv viewers

These avid real estate TV viewers come to the table fully prepared. Each night before the boob tube, they sponge up the tips and info. It’s literally an education for them, like Sesame Street for adults. In talking to these clients, I was in utter awe of how their perception of real estate was colored by their TV viewing habits.

When I mentioned the importance of running comps, they didn’t skip a beat and said “We visited some active and sold listings already…We love Mike on Real Estate Intervention”. In discussing the right price to enter the market, they said “It shouldn’t be too high or else it will take too long to sell. We don’t want to end up like that crazy seller on Property Shop. Poor Tatiana!”. And the conversation continued to be peppered with allusions to real estate TV (Genevieve said this, and David Bromstad said that, blah blah blah).

My initial reaction was, “Wait a second, who’s the realtor here!?” But, the more they talked, the more I realized, “Oh my, they were doing the listing presentation for me. I could get used to this!” It almost made me want to write a thank you card to HGTV!

To agents who hate real estate tv shows:

To the agents who bemoan that these shows set up unrealistic expectations (in a blink of an eye, Flip That House & voila, make a profit!”) or that they paint agents in an unflattering light (as seen by some epic confrontations between Josh Flagg & Chad Rogers of Million Dollar Listing), I say “Don’t be an ingrate!”

You see, real estate TV is largely responsible for mainstreaming real estate lingo. These programs have socialized an entire generation to toss around terms like ROI, staging, de-cluttering, DOM like it’s second nature to them. I don’t feel eclipsed, threatened or devalued at all as a real estate professional. In fact, I feel the more informed the clients are, the easier it is for us. I don’t have to start from scratch. We can spend less time educating and more time wheeling and dealing….which, as Martha says, is a good thing.

As an aside, a Hollywood publicist relayed to me that one of the Million Dollar Listing boys is leaving the show and Bravo has been on the hunt for a replacement… it is easy for us to anonymously sit behind our laptops and judge people on TV, but let me pose this question: If Bravo offered that role to you, would you take it?