Doug Coutts’ TV Preview: House Hunt

House Hunt director Robyn Paterson and house hunter Shandel Ngan Woo on TV1’s Breakfast.

TV Preview: House Hunt | TV1, 8.00 Sunday

A PERSONAL VIEW
By Doug Coutts

Who’d want to be buying a house these days? For a start, if you’re looking anywhere near Auckland you’re already priced out of the market with the rest of the country – apart from Woodville – not far behind.

To make matters worse, the banks are playing hard to get while pretending not to be, and then there’s the likelihood of being followed around by a camera crew.

That happens to a couple of hapless house hunters every week in the imaginatively named House Hunt. The one in Auckland has $400,000 to spend, which doesn’t buy as much of Otara – where she’s looking – as you might expect.

In fact, it doesn’t buy you anything, not even a three-bed Hardiplank box next to a run-down redeveloper’s dream.

In Christchurch, things are a little easier, although not that much cheaper. In fact, the price of new builds in that part of the country seem to be on a par with the other metropolitan centres, and you’re still in Christchurch.

Still, we get to meet one couple keen to buy a chunk of liquefactable paradise and who want a tiled shower. Don’t they read the papers?

House Hunt is standard real estate reality fare – it’s very topical of course, but it boldly goes where everyone else has gone before. One plus is the narration script – it’s in English, applied with attention to the rules of grammar and tempers building up the jeopardy* with a dash of erudition.

And that’s something that’s as rare on telly as a reasonably priced house north of Balclutha.

*Building up the jeopardy: When the director hasn’t managed to get enough shots to tell the story, the producer puts in a 20-second wide shot and tells the writer, “This is where you’ll really need to build the jeopardy.”