TV shows prepare for housing crash

For the past ten years television viewers in the US, UK and Australia have been avid consumers of home improvement shows. The trend was reflected in the growing value of properties in these markets and the expectations that dabbling with Ikea furniture and learning about ‘spaces’ and ‘color’ would somehow even further enable bigger profits on sales of properties.

Over the last year or so the number of programmes touting simple ‘makeovers’ has fallen off dramatically, whether this is a reflection of ‘makeover fatigue’ or the dawning realisation of consumers that the market has peaked and everyone’s bedding down, is open to speculation.

The media however has a canny knack of setting trends and spending dollars to put programmes in place to reflect the trends.

It was therefore, not without some sense of irony that we were alerted to a growing number of requests on real estate forums and chatrooms for experts, opinion makers and victims of previous housing crashes to contact various media companies.

What many viewers of reality or documentary shows don’t realise is that these are typical areas (along with specialist magazines) that producers look for volunteers and contributors to the shows.

In the UK one such company, Animo are busy setting about recruiting victims and experts on the last property crash in London. The premise of their production is that a new property crash is imminent in Ireland’s overheated market.

Other UK production companies are also currently preparing programmes about and how to cope in a predicted UK property crash.

It’s been said before, but we suspect that this is a case of ‘life imitating art’, look forward to shows telling viewers how to strip out all that value they added before their properties are repossessed.