The buyers, who appear on House Hunters while they are searching for their perfect new home, do get paid an appearance fee for every episode they feature in.
House Hunters has always been a favourite among design fanatics, because the show showcases so many different homes in each episode.
The buyers who “hunt” for their new home and who are faced with choosing between all of the options on the show are paid a flat rate to appear on it.
The House Hunters format
While the home renovation shows on HGTV and other channels have become more popular in recent years, House Hunters has always been a staple for interior- and house design fanatics. This is because of the wide variety of houses that the show showcased.
Every House Hunters episode begins with the slightly oblivious “hunters” who usually only have a limited budget to spend on their new, dream home.
The audience then gets to watch as the agent shows these potential buyers several homes in a range of styles and which have different price points before they actually have to decide which house ticks most of the boxes on their wish lists.
Do you get paid to appear on House Hunters?
While House Hunters may seem extremely formulaic at first glance, most fans of the show actually find it quite interesting.
Whether fans are anxiously waiting till the end of the episode to see which house the hunters ultimately decided on they or just want to see whether every new option has more of the amenities that the buyers wanted or not, there is no doubt that the buyers are the central focus of House Hunters episodes.
As a result, many fans who have watched the show from home have wondered about its behind-the-scenes details or have even considered going on the show themselves.
In this case, one of the questions which pop up most frequently is whether the buyers get paid for their appearance on the show.
Just like with most other reality television programs, the families and individuals who appear on the show to “hunt” for a new house are paid for their time.
However, it is probably also important to note that the payment that the buyers receive is much lower than what most people would expect and is certainly not enough for a down payment on a brand new home.
Elizabeth and Jeff Newcamp were featured on two iterations of the House Hunters franchise. She revealed in 2019 that the couple only received a flat rate of $500 for their appearance on the original House Hunters show.
How much do the buyers get paid to appear on House Hunters International?
The first House Hunters spin-off, which is called House Hunters International, first started airing in 2006. The show featured buyers from the United States and Canada who were trying to find new homes in other countries all around the world.
Elizabeth and Jeff had so much fun in their first time on House Hunters that they decided to apply to be on the show’s international version when they were looking for a home in the Netherlands.
This time around, they were reportedly paid around $1,500 to appear on the show.
How long does an episode of House Hunters take to film?
It should be fairly apparent to anyone watching the show that appearing on House Hunters is not likely to be any wannabe reality star’s big break.
However, the appearance fee that the show pays its “actors” seems much lower when you consider how long it actually takes to film the episodes.
Reportedly, it takes over 30 hours in total, filmed over the course of three to five days, to get just one episode of House Hunters filmed in its entirety. That works out to just over $100 per day of filming.
Do the real estate agents get paid to appear on House Hunters?
The buyers who appear on House Hunters may not be paid as handsomely as most fans of the reality show expected. But the fact that the real estate agents who appear on the show are not paid at all is even more shocking.
The real estate agents who appear on House Hunters are almost as crucial to the format as the buyers are, and they are often tasked with the seemingly impossible task of finding lavish homes with long lists of amenities on limited budgets.
Even so, these real estate agents are not compensated for the time that they spend filming the show or for the work that they do to find the houses, outside of the notoriety and publicity that they receive by being on the show.
