Flipping Showdown
Season 1 HGTV (*177) 21:00 Reality
When it comes to house flipping, few can match up to renovating power pair Anita and Ken Corsini. They have been renovating houses for more than 15 years and have basically turned it into an art-form of sorts for their reality home reno show Flipping Showdown. “We discovered a passion for this early on, and it’s bloomed into a business that has kept us busy 24/7,” explains 44-year-old Anita.
The competition show is filmed in Atlanta, and Ken and Anita have tasked three teams of two people to overhaul and renovate a house each over six months. “We buy the houses using our own money,” says Ken, add-ing that “it’s for these rising stars in the reno world to use their skills and know-how to flip the houses into profitable homes.” The winning team gets $1 million (R15 million) in cash plus a work contract with Ken and Anita’s renovation company Red Barn Homes. “It’s a mammoth task and we’ve seen one team struggle to stay within the limits of their budget, while another had time issues making deadline. It’s worth it though,” says 45-year-old Ken. “They’re given dilapidated homes and giving them a major revamp. One pair were almost down to the foundations with the renovations they wanted to do – and it was impressive. We didn’t expect to see something like that, gointo that deeply into a single plan.”
Anita points out that restoring a house isn’t as easy as it seems though, because the first step is the most diffcult. “You need to identify the correct house, you need to know that there’s a good structure. If you choose the wrong house or you get the incorrect price point, you’re going to lose. It’s an automatic problem that you can’t rectify no matter what you do.”