That Time We Were On House Hunters

So, we were on House Hunters! Did you catch our episode? If you’re curious- our episode is “Fast and Furious In Kansas City”, season 194, episode 2!

To participate, I had to sign an NDA- so I’m not really allowed to tell you the in’s and out’s of making our episode, but I CAN tell you a little bit about our experience and show you some really fun, behind the scenes pictures!

It all started back in the winter of 2019. We knew we were going to be moving to Kansas City, so I decided to peruse the HGTV website to see if they were casting for any of their shows. We are HUGE HGTV fans, so I figured, why not!

Typically, shows are filming in the big cities- LA, NY, ATL, etc but I figured I’d check anyway. Turns out, they were casting for House Hunters! I submitted our application right away and heard back really quickly from their casting agent that they were interested and wanted to move us on to the next “round” for consideration.

We filled out a more in depth application and after they received that, we had a skype interview with the casting director so he could talk to us face to face and see how we interacted with each other on camera.

After that, we didn’t hear anything for quite some time and figured the timing must not have worked out.

But, it did! At the very last second they contacted us about coming out to film in February 2020 and making our episode!

Our realtor, Brett, had already been on 3 previous episodes of House Hunters, so he was a HGTV veteran! We roped him in to filming with us again and had the BEST time.

We filmed over 6 (? I think it was) days, 3 days one week, 3 more days a week later- 10 to 12 hour days. So it was fun, but also really tiring!

We love to do unique and fun opportunities like this though, so we loved it! (We were actually going to get to film an extra spot for a Rocket Mortgage ad too, but 2020 canceled it)

In our episode, we toured 7 different houses (usually it’s only 3!) and our episode appears to all be one day of searching- so we had to wear the same clothes the ENTIRE TIME. No wardrobe changes for us and I had to recreate the same hair and makeup each day too.

Turns out, a lot of our clothes didn’t work well on camera- too much texture, stripes, wrong color, etc and all of our closets were already packed for moving. Which is how I ended up wearing this random sweater for 6 days straight and Jim had to borrow Brett (our realtor’s) puffy coat.

It was a total whirlwind experience, but I am so glad we did it! We had the best time together.

After we finished filming in February, we had to wait for our episode to be edited and then released! (You’re not allowed to tell anyone or talk about it until you have an air date). Finally the email came in the middle of August that our episode was airing! (They only give you a few days notice) So we had a watch party at Brett’s house!

It was totally nerve wracking because we hadn’t seen any of the footage, had zero idea how the episode turned out, or what it would look like. They had actual hours of footage that had to be condensed into 22 minutes- no small feat!

But it turned out to be really fun again- only a few cringe worthy moments and I was relieved overall with how it turned out- ha!

So, that’s pretty much it! If you’re going to be buying and selling sometime in the future- check out the HGTV website and see if they’re currently casting for anything. It might just work out!

If you have any behind the scenes House Hunters questions- drop them in the comments below! I’ll answer them if I can!