It’s been 17 years, and homeowners are still debating: To love it or to list it?
After a brief hiatus since 2022, HGTV premiered a revamp of the series Love It or List It, with the first episode airing on April 21. It still has the signature banter, competitive nature, and shocking reveals—but with an added freshness, courtesy of new host Page Turner. As the designer of Flip or Flop Nashville and Fix My Flip, she’s no stranger to HGTV or challenging renovation jobs.
“I think people are still asking the same question, you know: What should we do when you’re living in a house that doesn’t work for you?” says veteran host David Visentin. “Should you renovate, or should you leave? I think that Page brings a new spice to it, that’s for sure. She brings her own energy. She brings a newness to it, a little bit of discovery, because the two of us don’t really know each other.”
If you’ve seen the show, you know Visentin has been the one who tries to get homeowners to “list it” since 2008. Facing off against designer Hilary Farr, who declined to rejoin the cast for the show’s new era, Turner was able to study up on all his moves, which she believes gave her a bit of an edge.
“I feel like I know David, because I’ve watched the show,” she says. “I’m like, ‘I know how he’s gonna respond.’ So I get to pull some surprise rabbits out of my hat.”
If you come to see the features of the potential houses and the stunning transformation of the original home, you definitely stay to watch the competition unfold. And you never know with reality TV how much of that is for show—but on Love It or List It, it’s evident that the real estate rivalry is for real (albeit friendly).
“He’s so cool—he’s like this in real life too,” Turner says of her co-host. “So this season is very fun, interesting, and challenging. And I say it’s hot; [Visentin] said it’s a mess. So it’s a hot mess.”
Here’s a look behind the scenes of the new season of Love It or List It, which features eight hour-long episodes.
David Visentin: Well, having done real estate pretty much my whole life—and my father was a broker, so I’ve worked with him forever—I have fairly good negotiating skills, and I have a good ability to get people on the same page and to get them to understand what their best options are in a positive way. And I think that’s kind of my secret power. I’ve been trying to work on it with [Turner], but it’s not working. But I’m gonna get there.
Page Turner: I know why it’s not working, because you work to get them on the same Page. And I’m like, ‘Oh, he just made my job so easy.’ For me, my creative genius is that I can take a space and redesign it to make it work without having to add square footage. Now, I didn’t know how good I was until I got on this show, because we can’t add too much square footage to these houses this season, for whatever the reason is: Sometimes it’s [because of] permits, sometimes I have to drop a floor, whatever it is—but I’m able just to sit down and take a breath and say, ‘Okay, this is our only choice in this space. So let’s kind of play this maze game and move some things around to make it work and bring function,’ and then beautiful reveals this season—I mean, I’m really able to dig down in my design bag on the show.
DV: It’s finding out what they don’t even know in terms of what they actually need. They come up with a wish list for us in the beginning, and then that becomes a must-have list, and you kind of have to get them there, otherwise you’re going to show them stuff that either they can’t afford or they don’t need. And in the end, they’re going to say, ‘Yeah, you know what, we don’t really need that.’ So we have to condense it to something that makes sense: financially, emotionally, and functionally.
PT: And it’s the same on the design side; they give me their wish list as well, and I’m just shaking my head. So I let them have fun with it, and then it starts shrinking, but I’m able to say, ‘Okay, well, maybe not this, but let’s look at this.’
And let’s just start massaging this out carefully, because so many emotions are involved. We become therapists, and we find this happy place, and then at this big, beautiful reveal, I give them—which even David’s shocked at all the time, right? Not at my ability, but sometimes I get really boxed in, like, I can’t add square footage, I can’t add a bathroom. What am I going to do? And then [the homeowners] get to make their decision.
DV: We both find out at the same time, and we both have no idea what they’re going to decide. So it’s a surprise for both of us. Sometimes it’s very shocking. Sometimes I’m very surprised. But then I find out that people will often stay for things that they say they need, but maybe they don’t, right?
I’ve shown houses to people that have three kids, and they’re in a three-bedroom house, and they end up staying in those houses, as opposed to going for a four-bedroom house. And you would think, logically, you should go with a four-bedroom house. But it doesn’t always work out that way.
PT: Yeah, because the design is undeniable. So they want to stay in the home they’ve been in, and I’ve turned a house into a home, so why leave now?
PT: We walked in a house, and David calls it the roller coaster house, because it had two stairs up to get from the living room, you get three steps to get to the dining room, four steps to get to the kitchen, four steps to get to the den.
DV: In the bathroom, there were steps to get to the shower. It was the worst floor plan I’d ever, ever seen.
PT: This was just one floor. So David was like, ‘I got this.’
DV: ‘They should leave now, just move on without giving it away.’
PT: I’ll say this: When he walked into the reveal, he was shocked, because I may or may not have dropped the floor and leveled it out. He said, ‘You can’t do it.’ I said, ‘Okay, I can’t. You’re right. We’ll see.’
Find out what happens in that episode and the rest of season 20 by tuning in on HGTV and streaming on Max and discovery+.
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