'House Hunters' TV show is fake. Does it matter?

The statement doesn’t address the issue of showcasing houses that aren’t on the market, however, leading some to worry that “House Hunters” oversimplifies the process to the point where first-time homebuyers will enter the real estate market with unrealistic expectations. "House Hunters is presenting dangerous misinformation about the home-buying process and deleting all of the accompanying complications and consequences,"  Marcelle Friedman writes in Slate.  "It's turned what is actually a messy, frustrating, often dead-end process into a seamless (and perhaps necessary) path toward fulfillment."

It's true – home buying is messy, and even the easiest transactions take longer than they do on "House Hunters." “On finding the property, I often work with people for two to three months,” says Ilya Jacob Rasner, a real estate agent at the Rasner Group at Keller Williams Realty in Cambridge, Mass. Walking through “10 to 15 houses is not unreasonable,” he points out, not to mention hundreds of potential listings that clients often peruse online before even meeting with him.

From there, Mr. Rasner says, the closing process can take anywhere between 45 and 60 days. “You’re looking at at least a month and a half to facilitate this whole process. Generally speaking, it gets done no faster than that, but it often takes even longer.”

Such a drawn out process doesn’t really jive with TV production schedules, especially for a show as prolific as “House Hunters” has been over its 13-year run.

What’s more, conditions vary wildly across different real estate markets. A high-demand urban area like Boston, where Rasner works, will have more prolonged searches and quicker turnaround times than a depreciated or rural market. But on “House Hunters,” all regions are given equal time in front of the camera.

The question is, does any of this really matter? If there are still people out there with a shred of faith in the “reality” part of reality television, then maybe.  Showing houses that aren’t even for sale is pretty egregious for a show all about the search process.

But out in the real world, Rasner doesn’t think the show has contributed to any problems in the buyers’ market. “People aren’t buying houses all that often, so watching it isn’t affecting them on a day to day basis,” he laughed. “And it doesn’t change the real process in any way. I always sit down with clients first thing to discuss in detail what’s really involved.”

"Furthermore," he added, “people aren’t watching that show for the procedural stuff. They watch for the actual houses, and the [buyer's] needs."

He has had several clients who have watched “House Hunters.” So far, none have had a problem reconciling their real-life expectations to what they saw on the show.  

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