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Media musings: Reality TV 'flippings' go crazy
I may not seem like the ideal target audience for the real estate "flipper" shows that populate cable television these days. I am in fact a homeowner, but the biggest home improvement issue on my mind these days is "Should I leave the cement floor in my unfinished basement painted lime green, or should I paint it a different color?"
The sad thing is that, at some point, my house's original owner thought it would be a really good idea to paint the basement green, along with about a dozen other "improvement" projects that we've had to undo over the years.
He thought it looked good, though, and -- now here's the really sad part -- he probably thought it would help him get more money out of the house when he sold it. Because those cement-gray basements are so depressing!
That sort of delusion is common to most homeowners, though. Somehow, we're convinced that if we just make the right kind of improvements to our little houses, we'll go from making a decent rate of return someday on our home sale to making just gobs of money off it. I mean, who wouldn't pay top dollar for a three-bedroom bungalow with a working reproduction of the Trevi fountain in the carport?
And that foolhardy dream is what makes these "flipper" shows -- including A&E 's "Flip This House," TLC 's "Property Ladder" and now Bravo's new "Flipping Out" -- so incredibly entertaining. Every episode, we watch homebuyers (usually pros on "Flip This House" and amateurs on "Property Ladder") buy a house that they think is undervalued, with the intention of fixing it up and quickly selling it for a big profit.
Now there's no question that a very savvy real estate investor -- someone who understands houses, neighborhoods and, above all, people -- can make piles of money flipping houses. The operative word is "can."
There are so many variables involved, so many hidden pitfalls on both the financial and remodeling ends of the scheme, that every single episode of these shows tends to skirt disaster as the costs of repairs start skyrocketing and the potential for profit goes down. Perhaps the most pathetic two minutes in all of television are the closing credits for an episode of "Property Ladder" where the flippers haven 't been able to sell the house and stare bravely into the camera and try to convince themselves that the "perfect buyer" is just around the corner. Keep dreaming, Trump Jr.
But Bravo's new "Flipping Out," which premiered last week and whose second episode airs at 9 tonight, has them all beat. It takes all the tensions and pressures of the flipping game and encapsulates them in the personality of Los Angeles real estate mogul Jeff Lewis, who is smooth, savvy and completely insane.
Jeff has clearly made a lot of money at real estate, but the catch is that all that money keeps getting poured back into new houses and new deals. The result is that there's absolutely no foundation to his enterprise and, if the current round of deals doesn't pan out, he's in big trouble. It's telling that at one point Jeff confesses that his credit rating is probably lower than someone who has never owned a house, simply because he carries so many mortgages at one time.
This would freak anybody out, but Jeff has gone so far beyond freaking out into a kind of Zen state where he obsesses about every single detail endlessly. He instructs his assistants to load his fridge with bottled water so the Evian labels face outward, and when ordering a drink, says he wants "40 percent lemonade, 45 percent cranberry juice, and 15 percent Sprite." He cheerfully claims to have obsessive-compulsive disorder, but says that in real estate, "I've found a profession that validates and celebrates my disorders."
The first season of "Flipping Out" will follow several ongoing deals that Jeff has cooking, but the show is such a gas not because of the usual real estate porn -- remodeling the houses, dealing with the inspectors, finally scoring with that big buyer -- but because of the relationships between Jeff and his subordinates.
At some level, Bravo wants to present Jeff as The Worst Boss Ever and he provides an ample amount of ammo, such as the scene in last week's episode where he fires an assistant for talking on his cell phone while waiting for Jeff to get home. (Jeff allows personal calls when the assistant is driving on an errand, but after he's parked? A big no-no.)
But I found Jeff sort of endearing in a hyper-tweaked way, one of those California rich guys who uses Navajo healers and pet psychics to try to chase away his neuroses. He has zero separation between his work life and his personal life and has assembled his team as a sort of surrogate family, with himself as sort of a father figure. The Great Santini, maybe, but still a father figure.
And for someone who is supposedly so averse to disorder, his line of work makes him something of a chaos junkie. All in all, he has the potential to become one of reality television 's most interesting characters.
Plus, I have to say, I sort of see his point about the Evian labels. Yes, it's an incredibly anal thing to demand, but if you're going to pay a 30-year-old part-time bartender to stock your fridge with bottled water, it almost goes without saying that you have to be nit-picky about the way it's stocked. Not to care how the bottles are arranged would seem almost rude.
