Is Sell This House fake?

Not everything on Sell This House is portrayed entirely accurately, but this is true for just about any reality show on television.

You will be hard pressed to tune into a channel like HGTV or even A&E these days, without stumbling upon some kind of home make-over, home renovation, or even home staging kind of series these days.

But even though shows like Property Brothers, Love It or List It, Fixer Upper, Unsellable Houses and Sell This House remain firm favorites of fans all across the world, there is just no denying that these shows, and the work that they claim to do on such tight timeframes and budgets – often seem just a bit good to be true.

A detailed look at Sell This House

This is especially true for the long-running A&E show, Sell This House, which is hosted by the talented Tanya Memme and her team of talented home designers and stagers.

The Sell This House team helps homeowners get their undesirable homes up to scratch with just a few thousand dollars and a few days’ worth of renovations. The show has certainly provided us with some winning DIY-tips through the years.

And while it has not exactly been publicly sued like Fixer to Fabulous, Love It or List It, Renovate My Family and others have been, it is still a reality show that only includes parts of its often days-long renovations in the final episodes.

Sell This House in a nutshell

Sell This House’s name changed to Sell This House: Extreme after designer Roger Hazard’s exit from the show before its ninth season.

However, its premise has remained unchanged for more than two decades. This run can be summarized as follows:

Detail	Description
Series premiere	July 6, 2003
Total seasons	11
Total episodes	Over 200
Most recent episode	January 22, 2022

One good thing – Sell This House uses real homeowners

When you start falling down the rabbit hole of what is real and what is fabricated about your favorite reality television shows, it is easy to start questioning just about every aspect of what you see on screen.

However, since several of the couples who have actually had their unsellable homes featured on the show over the years have relayed their experiences after the fact, it seems like the show at least features real couples who have really struggled with getting their houses sold.

And based on what these couples have said, it seems like the series really does do everything, ranging from changing light fixtures and moving furniture, to painting walls during filming (though not all of this work is necessarily done by the Sell This House team).

They do gussy things up for the cameras

Through the years, A&E has released a few blooper reels for Sell This House which reveal just how many times some of the show’s scenes are re-done in order to get things “just right.”

And, while this is certainly not out of the ordinary for reality television, it may come as quite the shock to fans who appreciate the seemingly on-the-fly nature of the show.

Moreover, if you have ever wondered how the show’s talented team of professional stagers and designers manage to transform a home with just a new coat of paint, it turns out that the answer is studio lighting.

Molly Reid, who visited the home of Yvonne and Josh LaBauve (which was featured in a 2009 episode of Sell This House) on behalf of The Times-Picayune, observed several production lights throughout the home during her visit.

This would have certainly given the home its updated, magical glow.

Do the Sell This House homes really sell?

At the end of the day, nothing about Sell This House matters quite as much as they main question that fans usually have about this show: does the show actually do what it promises?

And unfortunately, it seems like the Sell This House homes do not really have the best track-record once they hit the market.

To be fair, Memme and the rest of the Sell This House team have helped hundreds of homeowners  transform their homes in the last few decades (and there are bound to be some duds in between).

But both Nicole and Dan Robinson, whose home profiled on the show in 2003, and the aforementioned LaBauves, did not end up seeing true results after the cameras stopped rolling.

By the end of 2003, the Robinsons’ home was still on the market, and the LaBauves even took their home off the market completely a short while after the series had wrapped and cited generally poor market conditions as the main reason for their decision.