I had a phone call recently. It’s the type of call that is not “the norm”. I knew Cassie had emailed House Hunters International about the possibility of being on their show after she had heard from the Kruses that they were looking for couples who had bought a place in Puerto Rico. But I didn’t really think they would be so eager to talk with us so quickly! This is kind of how it went:
Melissa: Hi, this is Melissa from House Hunters International!
BK: Hi, this is Britton. How are you?
Melissa: Good…We are interested in doing your story! Can you tell me a little more about it?
BK:( I told her all about our story, the property, why Puerto Rico…so on and so forth)
Melissa: That sounds great! Well, the next step before we line things up is to get a casting video from you. I can send you some information about what we are looking for in it.
BK: No problem. We can do that and have one to you in the next few days!
So these past few days Cassie and I (with help from Cassie’s mom the camera-woman -thanks Char!) made a short casting video. In the video they just want to see how we live currently and why we want to move. They basically want to see how we look “on camera”. Hopefully we come across well!
It would be cool to be on the show as it is one we definitely like to watch and I think we would be a bit different than their regular shows. Most of what I’ve seen on there are people who have quite a bit of money to spend. Cassie and I are very budget-oriented and one of our (my) criteria was that the place be “affordable”. To me that meant not getting a mortgage. Also we were ok with having a fixer-upper, unlike most people that we’ve seen on the show.
We want to move down there in the next few years, not continue to work and pay for the thing over the next 15-30. So, we save the majority of our income, we both drive normal little paid-off econobox cars, and we have invested in rentals in the hopes that one day we could use that income to live off of (see Fruitfulista for more on how we do this!)
I’d hope they would present us as the ‘fixer upper/saver/self-sustainability people’ and maybe tell the story of how we ended up with the property. One thing we were surprised about is that nearly all, if not all of the shows are re-enactments, so according to Melissa the producer/casting person in New York, we were perfect for their show!
So, here’s our casting video- wish us luck!…What do you think?
You’ll have to have us over for your fake moving in party!
Love it! I hope you two are chosen for House Hunter International. Have them use our house as one of the houses you didn’t want! (I want to be casa dos).. haha
We have baby fruit trees and you can find all kinds of things wrong with our house.
Have them come in and say.. ewww I hate the color.. or look how SMALL this is.
So fun.
I hope we are in Rincon at the same time this year. I would love to meet you two!
I hope they pick you! I love that show and would like to see an episode that focuses on thrifty and sustainable lifestyles. I wonder why PR falls under International, though. I would like more mainlanders to know that PR is part of the US. Coming from California, I can tell you that most west coasters don’t know that. The world needs to know that Puerto Ricans are US citizens, the currency is the US dollar, you can drink the water, eat the food, and that we are governed by US Federal laws. — Fran
Great points Fran – Puerto Rico is definately thought of as another country and in a lot of ways it IS partly for that very reason. There are a lot of differences in laws though – property ownership being one of them (your parents automatically will get 1/2 of your 1/2 of properties when you die regardless of wills etc – joint ownership doesn’t apply here)…also you can’t forget that “pass-up back-up” is a legal driving rule (not true in the states) – haha! Lots of differences (including different tax rates – and no flexible health spending plans etc. ).
Living in Nashville in 1989 when USA used to be i guess 80 percent white showed me no matter how accurate where my facts regarding my citizenchip for some people the way i sound, the way i looked will never fit the way an American should be.That was then ,1992 here i come Orlando and 2 decades later from outsider i became a native .We have mavi , pinchos ,lechonera, still waiting for a gallera. Seems to be teh people that dont consider PR as part of USA might be old Baby Boomers that cant get over that tacos have replace penauts in a lot of Major League Baseball parks and Spanich have become the new English
Well we heard back. It’s a no go.
Apparently they don’t think Puerto Rico is International enough to qualify so they aren’t doing more shows there. Bummer!
Kind of a bummer. It would be a neat experience. For us the logistics didn’t work out between selling the house, Jeff going on travel etc etc. Maybe you’ll have to get another property in Panama! From what I’ve heard that is the place to store $ tax free and it looks like a nice place to live! You can start a gringo network of vacation rentals! You could rotate where you live depending on when people aren’t occupying places – that could be neat… Instead of one property you live on with rental cabanas you could have multiple rentals (Belize, Panama, PR, Canada, New Mexico, New Zealand) so you could have a change of scenery and climate…just thinking bigger!
@Katrina, the valid points you make about the weird Puerto Rican laws are simply laws that any US state could have. Federal laws can trump any state’s laws and any Puerto Rican law. But thank goodness states (and pseudo-states like PR) have the freedom to apply their own inheritance, real estate, tax, firearms, and traffic laws (think 80 mph in Texas and 60 mph max in Hawaii),etc. Yeah, those inheritance laws harken back to the old Spanish colonial days and they really suck. And yeah, you gotta scratch your head at some of the traffic laws!
@Britton and Cassie: So sorry. I think Puerto Rico is a conundrum to HHI and they’d rather not have to deal with it. — Fran