Chip and Joanna Gaines love the Lord, shiplap and home renovations but they’d really, really like it if people just lived in the homes they renovate instead of using them as vacation rentals.
The Waco Tribune reports that at least six of the homes featured on Fixer Upper have found their way to vacation rental sites like VRBO and AirBnb, much to the chagrin of Chip and JoJo, who would really prefer it if their happy customers didn’t try and turn a profit.
Most of the homeowners who’ve put their homes up for vacation rental haven’t done so with the intention of making money. Living in a home that has been Fixer-Upper’ed means that your house is now a background for selfies and other forms of invasive and hilarious unwanted attention.
Homeowner Dave Morrow described the people that stop and look at their home thusly, confirming all of my suspicions about the viewership of that show:
“They’re mostly women in their 50s and tend to be big ‘Fixer Upper’ fans or Baylor-oriented,” Morrow said. “(The home’s interior) is very Zen. We keep it like Joanna does — no clutter.”
What’s missing from that is a description of me, but I’ll let that slide for now.
In a statement addressing this issue, Magnolia Homes spokesman Brock Murphy said:
“We have no problems with our clients’ interest in using sites like VRBO and Airbnb to rent out their homes. In fact, we get it. But we are going to be more strict with our contracts involving ‘Fixer Upper’ clients moving forward.
We want to honor our national viewing audience. We want to do remodels for clients’ homes. That’s the true intent of our show, and we want to ensure that does not get lost in this new vacation rental trend. What started off with perfectly understandable intentions could cast a shadow of a doubt on the much bigger picture, and we are going to do our best to protect that moving forward.”
As a dedicated viewer of the best/worst/most compelling show on HGTV, I would gladly hop on a plane to Waco and spend the night surrounded by giant clocks and shiplap as far as the eye could see. I want to see what it’s like inside the “Barndominium.” I want to be a part of that world. I get it. I really do.
For those of you(me!) wondering when HGTV will stop showing reruns of this high-quality program, Fixer Upper returns sometime this fall.