Unreality TV: Real estate shows are still hot

Robert Sharenow, senior vice president for alternative programming at A&E, said he believes the market has made people more interested in finding out how to make the most of what they have, and programming should reflect that need.

"Flip This House" is expanding its cast of characters for the upcoming fourth season, adding renovation teams in Atlanta and Los Angeles to join returning "flippers" from San Antonio and New Haven, Conn.

HGTV said it has resisted house-flipping shows to concentrate on helping viewers make their own homes more appealing and livable and, as a result, more valuable.

"The real estate market is always going to have cycles and when we plan programming, we look at it in a three-to-five-year time frame," Samples said. "It wouldn't be a great decision to be making programming decisions based on how the market is going at the moment."

Peter Schiff, author of "Crash Proof: How to Profit from the Coming Economic Collapse," said he could understand why networks still love this programming. Some are essentially infomercials for real estate agents and people in the home renovation business, he said, and advertisers love supporting the genre, too.

He's not very surprised that the market downturn hasn't led to a downturn in real estate programming.

"The myth dies hard," Schiff said. "It's going to take awhile for Americans to understand the reality that what happened in real estate the last decade was a fantasy."

House-flipping shows increasingly create a false sense of hope in the eyes of homeowners about the value of real estate as an investment, he said. Of course, difficulty in obtaining loans will dash those hopes.

The better home shows will focus on helping people learn do-it-yourself projects to increase the value of their homes, he said.

A&E's Sharenow said he believes programs like "Sell This House" and "Flip This House" have proven themselves immune to the whims of the market.

"These shows at their core are about how to buy and sell your house," he said. "These questions are just as relevant now as when the market was robust, and it was easy to sell your house."

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