Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Buy My House’ On Netflix, Where Sellers Subject Their Houses To A ‘Shark Tank’-Style Panel Of Real Estate Investors

In Buy My House, home sellers present their houses to a panel of investors, in a Shark Tank-style format. The investors are Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman, Corcoran Group CEO Pamela Liebman, veteran NFL linebacker Brandon Copeland and high-end real estate broker Danisha Wrighster. Each have extensive experience investing in and making profits from real estate, and the idea is that they’ll bid on the houses presented to them after meeting the owners.

BUY MY HOUSE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Over reality-show-style shots of neighborhoods and houses, host Nina Parker says, “Real estate in America is a trillion-dollar industry.”

The Gist: In the first episode, the investors see a family home in a tony Austin neighborhood; the couple is ready to downsize. Then an “earthship” house in Taos, NM is presented; it can sustain itself via solar power, rainwater collection and all sorts of green construction. A massive, historic home in Oklahoma City is then shown; the house provided the owner a private space where she could recover from a serious illness and still give her ex-husband and their children space to live their lives. Finally, an investment property in Indio, CA is presented; the couple who renovated it are brokers themselves, and see it as a short-term rental property, but acknowledge it needs more work.

Offers are made, but sometimes there’s contingencies, mainly because the investor wants to do more due diligence or look into the market more. The offers are all cash, so the homeowners save themselves brokers’ fees and the hassles of escrow.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Like we said above, the format of Buy My House is essentially the same as Shark Tank, though the investors aren’t nearly as sharp with each other as the sharks are.

Our Take: If you’re the type of person who loves to look at home listings on Zillow as a form of recreation — or maybe even foreplay — then Buy My House will feed into that obsession well. It’s full of house-porn shots, similar to what you might see on any of Netflix’s Selling reality series. But the fun about this series is that the properties are a bit more varied than the pure high-end stuff you might see on those other shows.

Because the episodes end on mid-deal cliffhangers, we barreled through the first three in quick order, and we saw everything from beloved family homes to investment properties. We saw a tiny brick 2-bedroom house in suburban Detroit to a massive black-clad modern home in Madison, WI, of all places. One seller wasn’t as much putting a lake house he renovated on the market but asking for investment in his fledgling but seemingly successful real estate business.

What we didn’t see is a lot of diversity. Most of the homeowners we saw were white, which was a disappointment. If the idea of the show is that people who invest wisely and put some care and attention into their property can get four wealthy investors bidding for it sight unseen, then we need to see a more varied set of people getting that opportunity.

We’re not sure, but either the asking prices are set too high or the offers are intentionally low. The idea is that this is a cash deal, with no brokers fees; those can add up on houses that sell in the upper six figures or lower seven figures. But some of the low offers feel insultingly low to us. Then again, if the asking prices are too high to begin with, that’s what’s going to happen. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of conflict around this, though; no one’s calling the asking “nuts” and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of bidding wars going on, which tamps down the drama.

The other uncomfortable feeling we get from these negotiations is that these investors’ intentions are generally either to buy and flip or buy and do short-term rentals (i.e. Airbnb and the like). Redfin is known for buying up hundreds of houses in the areas it operates, cranking up the markets in those areas. These aren’t people who are investing in these properties to make a tiny profit by selling to a family who can move into a nice home. It’s why we hope to see more couple like the Detroit-area one who have a house that is nicely-appointed but affordable. We need to see more examples of housing that is still accessible to the public, instead of massive properties that are going for prices that 95% of the people watching can’t afford.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: “I’m trying to decide whether I have renewed faith or lost faith in the Redfin algorithm,” the co-owner of the California house tells Kelman after his offer. That’s about as obnoxious as any of the sellers got in the first three episodes.

Sleeper Star: We’re certainly more interested in the people selling homes that have sentimental value rather than the ones who used the homes as investment properties. We were super curious why the tattooed couple who owned the “earthship” has decided to sell after only four years in what looks like an oasis for people who like to live in an isolated area.

Most Pilot-y Line: We don’t know how many times Kelman said “I work for Redfin” or threw out the name in just about any context. Yes, we get that they have certain policies he has to follow, since he’s investing the company’s money. But we got it by the end of the first episode.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Despite our discomfort at the way this show pretty much promotes the idea that home ownership is out of reach for most Americans, Buy My House is mostly enjoyable, as long as the deals are for family homes with stories and not investment properties.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.