HGTV in the real estate business?

Posted by Vikki Neil | July 15, 2008

People always ask me what drove HGTV into the real estate space? Well, it was a pretty simple leap for those of us on the inside.

Since launching HGTV in 1994, Scripps Networks Interactive has become the dominant media and marketing company in the home, food and lifestyle categories. Many of those highly rated shows that led to the success of HGTV were based on home design and real estate entertainment, such as House Hunters and Design on a Dime.

As HGTV started branching out and creating more shows that were in the focused lens of real estate buying and selling, the ratings were staying strong or increasing. We knew the real estate category had connected to consumers in terms of television. Why couldn’t that extend itself to an online product?

I think a lot of people in the industry were surprised to learn we were developing this product ourselves. How can a television company compete in an online space?

A little known fact: we have over 300 people in our company focused on building, designing, selling and programming our online properties. And while we’ve never dealt with real estate search before, we do own The Food Network. And while I’ll be the first to admit that real estate is way more complicated, you’d be shocked to discover just how many similarities there are between chicken recipes and home listings.

We considered partnering with established real estate portals, but the more we evaluated potential partners, the more we realized that something was missing. All the offerings were/are were very intensely data-focused. Don’t get me wrong, I love data almost as much as an analyst, but it’s only part of the picture.

A home is the biggest investment most people will ever make, but it’s not an investment that is made solely with a calculator. Emotions tend to run high when you’re buying, selling or moving, because ideally it’s not just about finding a “house,” it’s about finding a “home.”

Recently, a well-known broker in the Northeast told me that it’s the kitchen or the neighborhood that make 99% of the buyers take the plunge. Buyers hope for a deal along the way, but a “deal” is almost always secondary. I tend to agree.

For the FrontDoor team, we’re focused on creating and sculpting the real estate search experience into something holistically different. For the last six months, we’ve been dotting our i’s and crossing our t’s. But now, we’re headed towards some really cool stuff that we can’t wait to share.So, stay tuned and keep enjoying the hunt….

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