Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The couples on the shows all seem to be college educated with gold jobs but some of their homes are clutered with junk, not very clean and in need of alot of work, yet they come off with snotty attitudes. And they all want the same ole amenities. I stopped watching.
TSam, you've got to stop watching HouseHunters. There may be a recovery group in your area to help you through the withdrawals.
May I suggest Doomsday Preppers as a substitute?
Actually, I made sure I didn't use any examples from House Hunters, since they are usually in the US, and we've discussed the HH couples ad nauseam. These examples came largely from Love It or List It, Income Property, Property Brothers, and maybe Holmes on Homes, even though I never see it on anymore.
I do need to find this Doomsday Preppers show, however....
Mainly because I'm always appalled at people on these HGTV shows who go shopping for food every day instead of having it on-hand. Especially the HH-International people in Europe and the far east. What do they do if there's a natural disaster? They don't have any food stored in their homes! They just rely on their governments? As far as "prepping" goes, I'm probably only an amateur, but I have several months' worth of non-perishable food. Plus I have a good amount of just my usual food in the pantry and freezer. I can't imagine having to go to the store every time I decide to make something.
I was trying to be Canada-specific in this thread. The open-concept thing is also a big annoyance among the US couples on HGTV shows, and we've have many threads on it. I just wanted to narrow it to the Canadian shows.
1. You never get tired of hearing them say things like "ootside" or "proh-cess." They say "en suite" so much, that all Americans now say it when it's just a "master bath." It's fun to drink a shot of Canadian whisky whenever they say "ootside," "proh-cess," or "en suite."
I have never once, in all of my 50+ years, said "ootside" or "en suite" ("proh-cess"...yeah, I will admit to that one).
2. Canadians must all have HUGE incomes, since they're always buying houses worth $400,000-$900,000. Even with these huge budgets, the houses are in crowded areas and need lots of work.
I wish!!!
3. Canadians seem to tolerate and even love a whole lot of government intrusion into their private property, enough to put the State of California and the New York City Mayor to shame. Want to take down a tree in your own yard? Gotta get permission. Want to have an electrician or plumber do some upgrades inside your house? Gotta have lots of inspectors come in to check it out. Have a low area in your back yard where puddles form? Can't do anything to it unless the environmental folks come out and give you permission. City government can even dictate how big your driveway must be or where you frame-in rooms in your finished basement. It's like every Candian city or town has an HOA!
Okay, you got me there. True, true, and true.
4. Even with all the intrusive inspections, rules and regs property owners must follow, Canadians always learn that the person who owned their house before them had all their work done without the proper permits and it's not up to code.
Damn. True again. (When I had my roof re-shingled last year, I got a frantic call from the roofers while I was still at work that I 'have to come and see this' (NEVER something you want to hear). Turns out that the previous owner, when he'd had the roof re-shingled in '98, had such a shoddy patchwork job done that there were gaping holes right underneath the shingles, exposing the entire attic.)
5. The worst thing any Canadian can hear when a wall is opened up, that sends shivers down their spines, is "Oh no! It's knob-and-tube!"
Can't agree or disagree with this...what on earth is "knob-and-tube"?
6. All Canadians want to live "down town" or "close to down town." All Canadians must be city people who love hustle and bustle. They have to walk to shops, walk to get coffee, walk to nightlife, etc and they don't want to have to drive anywhere, even 10 minutes away.
Not true. Only younger Canadians, and those mainly into an active night life will proclaim this. Or those rare Canadians with no driver's licence (me).
7. Canadians HATE suburbs. When they look at a perfectly nice home in a suburb that's 15 minutes from a city, they yell "No!!!" and complain how it's "too far from everything" they like to do. They prefer to pay a whole lot more money for a house half the size with a postage stamp yard or no yard.
Not true (again). However, isn't this true of Americans? Or am I living in a fantasy?
8. Even though Canada has slightly more square miles than the US, all Canadians must be crowded into a couple of expensive cities, and no suburbs or rural areas exist in between those cities. In between cities there must be vast wastelands where no one lives.
No no no...we Canadians DO have suburbs and rural areas between cities! The vast wastelands are reserved for Prairies only (kidding, Prairie-ites). So America has no vast wastelands? No desert areas?
9. In the very few suburbs that do exist in Canada, the newer-construction houses are big like in the US, but they are about 4 feet apart from each other. They like to be "close to everything" even their neighbors.
Nah, not true. There's got to be at least 5 feet of space between houses. :P I, for one, prefer not to be close to my neighbours. I don't want to be able to see what they are doing in their bathrooms and bedrooms at night when lights are on and curtains are open.
10. Almost every Canadian has to rent out a basement or attic apartment in order to afford their house, even though they are all super-wealthy (see #2).
Now, there's that super-wealthy thing again. Where do all of these super-wealthy Canadians live that you know? (Not counting the super-wealthy Canadian entertainers that have flown south, such as Jim Carrey...and I wouldn't be surprised if he did have people stored away in his attic or basement.)
11. Canadians make all major real estate decisions standing outside on a sidewalk talking to each other, or sitting in a coffee shop.
hhhmmm....maybe. There is, after all, a Timmie's on every corner (it's the law).
12. No one in Canada buys a house until a super-hot guy in a tool belt or two dorky twins show them 3-D computer images of how the house "can" look. Or until a smarmy gay man in a suit convinces them that an annoying British woman's designs are bad.
I have yet to see these dudes come to my area! Not that I'd want them to...
13. Every house in Canada has some hidden ticking-timebomb disaster-waiting-to-happen that is not discovered until the home is being remodeled.
Crap. True.
14. People in Canada are so desperate for apartments that as soon as someone puts in a basement apartment, twenty people are in a bidding war for the apartment and it rents for more than what anyone anticipated.
Yes, true again. Unless the apartment has roaches and/or bed bugs. Then the bidding goes even higher.
15. Everyone in Canada wants a "four-piece washroom" but the tub with the shower counts as "two pieces."
17. If a single Canadian woman is shopping for a home, if she's not fat, she has to have a fat friend come with her. It might be the law.
If so, I'm guessing that law would have been passed by Toronto's resident pseudo-mayor, Rob Ford. Otherwise, I haven't heard of it.
Okay, maybe it's more like "Oatside" that "ootside" depending on where in Canada the people are. Maybe "Oat and aboat." But during the remodeling, they are always checking on the "proh-gress."
Maybe the shows on HGTV just accidentally find these uber-rich people buying $750,000 run-down homes?
"Knob and Tube" is some sort of old-fashioned, unsafe wiring that many Canadian homes have hidden in their walls. According to shows on HGTV, if your house was built before 1980, it's probably lurking in your walls right now, waiting to spontaneously combust. ....Or for some government inspector to find, and force you to spend thousands to update.
Everyone in Canada on these shows wants to be "down town." They complain when a house is "too far" because they had to drive 10-15 minutes to get there. Just watch a few episodes and you'll see. That's why I concluded that Canadians hate suburbs and that they just have cities with nothing in between but snow and maybe moose. Conversely, if you watch a few episodes of a US-based HGTV show, you would conclude that the US is nothing but newly built cookie cutter suburbs.
I wonder if the Twins would ever go house-hunting out in the "wilds" of Canada? I have this vision of them having a nervous breakdown as soon as they leave the city limits and not being able to see a building for at least half a mile.
My girlfriend and her family moved here from Quebec. They overpaid for their house by 500k. (They had no clue what real estate values were here.) When the neighbor's house went on the market, they bought it because they feared whoever bought it would tear it down and rebuild. They spent 400k for fear of living next to construction even though I repeatedly assured them that Americans don't buy homes to tear them down to rebuild new homes. So, at least in Montreal, Canadians are buying and tearing down houses to rebuild. And I can't imagine how they can afford to do that!
Santa actually works for the Warren County DPW, it's fun seeing him on the road when they are paving
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
