HGTV Stars Reveal How They Cut Corners Behind The Scenes

“The computer I use to design the interiors has these cool features called ‘copy’ and ‘paste’ that save me hours of work.”

“We explain that if anything seems unsatisfactory, we’ll be back with a wrecking ball, and where the fuck will they live then?”

“All of our ‘after’ clips are CGI. Indianapolis will always look like shit.”

“You’d be surprised how much free time President Jimmy Carter has.”

“Tarek and I are actually only 2 inches tall, so it looks normal when we renovate a model that’s 3 square feet.”

“Oftentimes the renovations we make to a home allow us to franchise it as a Subway afterwards, recouping our losses.”

“If we can’t find a buyer for a house by the time production is supposed to wrap, sometimes I’ll just put it on my own credit card and then dispute the charges with Visa.”

“Everyone we work with is on the sex offender registry, so they’re cheap.”

“Sometimes I just slap down a pink flamingo in the front yard and call it a day.”

“We have an ax murderer on-call in case we need to quickly bring down the value of a property.”

“We use CGI to create Jonathan, which is much cheaper than cloning.”

“There is a provision in the contract couples sign to be on our show that requires them to let us live rent free in their home once renovations are complete. My husband and I haven’t paid rent in years.”

“The entire notion of private property is an illusion. What, you think you own this land because a piece of paper says you do? Give me a break.”

“When I’m having a particularly hard time selling a house, I manipulate global markets in order to cause economic panic, which increases demand for homes, and then, voilà.”

“Bones are really expensive, so most of our homes are made of wood.”

“I usually get the owners to pay for everything by spending a good chunk of preproduction digging up blackmail about them.”

“We make our PAs do all of the renovations and production.”

“All of my home inspections are done at gunpoint.”

“If we can’t find a good house to fix up, I’ll just pick a nice house and wreck the shit out of it first.”

“There’s no real secret: I just have no drive other than merciless capital gain.”