What Goes On Behind the Cameras at Home Makeover Shows?

Some homeowners said they were promised a dream house if a crew remade their homes for TV. The lawsuits they filed later told a different story.

Millions of viewers, eager for a Cinderella story with real estate as the central character, watch televised home renovation shows to see troubled houses transformed into showstoppers.

Story lines on the popular programs vary, but they all sell the same aspirational yet inclusive fantasy: With the help of a team of expert contractors, any house can become beautiful, even with constraints of time and budget. The pandemic, in which both binge-watching and home renovation projects surged, gave these programs an additional boost.

And as the popularity of the shows has grown, so have whispers of incompetence, negligence and shoddy construction. A number of former contestants on such shows say they were promised a dream house, but ended up with a construction nightmare. Court documents reveal that at least a dozen lawsuits, their details shrouded by strict confidentiality agreements, have been settled out of court. Across social media platforms like Instagram, the number of public complaints made online is significantly higher.

In Las Vegas, Mindy and Paul King appeared on Property Brothers in 2019, and are currently suing the production company that creates the program for HGTV for fraud, misrepresentation and faulty workmanship, which they say left their home riddled with code violations as well as safety and health hazards.

In North Carolina, Deena Murphy and Tim Sullivan appeared on HGTVs Love It or List It in 2016, then were also sued after suing the producer and contractor of that show said there was a breach of contract.