Property Virgins

Disclaimer: I made a few pictures for this post, but only finished two of them.  They're here and boring.  Don't hate me.


The Boyfriend and I have been watching a lot of HGTV.  That’s Home & Garden Television for all you people with lives.  Basically, it’s a channel devoted to renovating, redesigning, selling, and buying property and the way-too-wealthy North Americans who can do such things.  Seriously, it can get pretty gross, but that doesn't make me love it any less because good TV is good TV.

There is this one show on HGTV, though, that focuses on people that we can sometimes relate to called Property Virgins.  The premise is to take what is usually a couple and follow them on the search for their first home.  The first thing the producers do is cast a couple.  A terrible couple.  The casting call is something like this:

Looking for a male, mid to late twenties, completely unaware of anything around him, devoid of personality, and dumb as shit.  He is to be cast alongside a female, early to mid twenties, extremely picky, and uses the word “hate” with reckless abandon as in, “I know I said I wanted hardwood floors, but I hate this color.”  Also, be mixed race but act stereotypically white (which isn’t a problem because most of the episodes are shot in Canada where everyone is white on the inside anyway.)

Then the show’s host, Sandra Rinomato, Canadian Realty Queen, takes the couple to a neighborhood that they would consider ideal.  She then proceeds to tell them they cannot now nor ever afford to live there, setting up the theme of every episode: “Look, you’re dumb and have no concept of realty or money in general, and you’re going to have to stop being prissy bitches and learn to compromise.”

Sandra then asks the couple of Twinkies what their list of demands is and shows them three places that are within their price range that meet some of those demands (which really allows them to focus on the one thing that the place doesn't have), but doesn’t tell them the actual cost—she makes them guess!  It’s AWFUL.  The couple is always confused and embarrassed about this part and usually guesses too high, which ends up working in their favor so they’re like, “$600,000?  That’s not so bad!”  Oh, Sandra, you sneaky, sneaky Canadian.

Needless to say, The Boyfriend and I are dying to be on the show.  We’ve even considered moving to Toronto just to be publically humiliated by Sandy herself.  The problem is…we’re poor.  And snow is the worst thing in the world.  So, we will have to make do with our imaginations.

Sandra would narrate over wide shots of the city we're looking to buy in, "In Anytown, The Boyfriend and Lordess of the Blog are discovering homebuying isn’t a walk in the park.  Both are college graduates, but they may as well be using their Bachelors of Arts in English as toilet paper.  They are both currently working outside of their fields in dead-end, part-time positions and living in a one bedroom garden apartment—that’s the quaint way of saying 'underground.'"

I'd go, "I’m a receptionist at a doctor’s office."

He'd go, "I’m a service representative at the local university."

And the producers would be annoyed that we don't have children or dogs and would make us improvise, "We have two little ones at home, Bart and Di."

"They’re assholes," The Boyfriend would say and that would get edited out because Canadians don't swear.

Then we would go over our wishlist:

• to not be living directly below anyone else so we don’t have to breathe in their smoke or hear them rearrange their furniture every night
• no risk being held up at gunpoint in our own building
• no flooding
• have a pilot light that the landlord has to illegally light because the gas company refused to do it for not being up to code

Sandra would say, "I’m taking them to their ideal neighborhood of Westershearbrambleberryhiggins Park to begin the humiliation process.  So, The Boyfriend, Lordess of the Blog, what do you think houses go for around here?"

Me: Way too much.

The Boyfriend: Yeah, why are we here?

Me: I cleaned houses once and those places could have fit in these garages.

The Boyfriend: We would never expect to even walk these streets without getting arrested for looking suspicious.

Sandra: Try 1 to 2 million.

Me: Is she listening to us?

The Boyfriend: Maybe our budget got lost in translation.

Sandra: Hockey.

Me: Right…

Sandra: So these places are a little above your budget of…um…$28.58?

The The Boyfriend would pick a penny up from the street, "$28.59, sucker!"  And then he would get arrested in Westershearbrambleberryhiggins Park and we would have to charm the mounties to get him released from custody.


So, obviously, we will never be on Property Virgins, but a girl can dream.