Of TVNZ\u2019s top 10 broadcast shows, four were local series about buying, selling or renovating homes. New Zealand\u2019s Best Homes with Phil Spencer, Grand Designs NZ, Moving Houses and Find My Country House NZ are all ratings winners for TVNZ, but they\u2019re just some of the property shows on our screens right now. Peruse the free-to-air TV schedule and you\u2019ll also find The Block Australia, Love It or List It NZ<\/a> (plus the British, Australian and Canadian versions), Location Location Location NZ, George Clarke\u2019s Homes in the Wild, George Clarke\u2019s Amazing Spaces, Beachfront Bargain Hunt and House Hunters International.<\/p>\n It seems New Zealand audiences can\u2019t get enough of shows about houses: buying them, selling them, chucking them onto the back of a truck<\/a> and dragging them across the motu. We watch baches being built by the beach and cottage searches in the countryside<\/a>. TV hosts travel across the world to explore New Zealand\u2019s fanciest and quirkiest homes, taking us inside award-winning architectural masterpieces that we\u2019ll never experience in real life. There\u2019s no shortage of houses to look at, no limit to the different ways we can watch people walk down a hallway and rave about the light, the angles, the colours and the textures.\u00a0<\/p>\n But, why? What makes property shows so popular, and why are we so curious about having a gander inside other people\u2019s homes?\u00a0<\/p>\n TV presenter and house-hunting expert Phil Spencer told The Spinoff (full interview coming next week) that the reason is simple: humans are \u201cdeeply nosy\u201d. As host of the long-running and popular Location Location Location, as well as our own New Zealand\u2019s Best Homes (a new season starts on TVNZ on September 14), the English property guru has spent the past 25 years poking around other people\u2019s houses. He\u2019s in no doubt that viewers just love sitting in their own living rooms while getting the chance to peek through someone else\u2019s.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe all live somewhere, and most of us probably fancy living somewhere else, but we choose our homes for different reasons at different times of life,\u201d Spencer told us. \u201cI find it endlessly fascinating wandering around houses, great or small, and wondering, \u2018what suits one person and why?\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s a notion echoed by Dr Jennie Watts, senior lecturer in communication studies at AUT. \u201cPeople are drawn to things that are beautiful and creative, and there is a sense of curiosity about how people make those kinds of decisions around their home,\u201d she says. Watts also believes that property shows offer a comforting watch for many viewers, who find reassurance in the format\u2019s familiar and predictable narrative arc. \u201cThere\u2019s some sort of problem, we watch the renovation occur and all the trials and tribulations of that, and then there\u2019s this beautiful outcome and people are generally happy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n While these property shows are a reliable ratings winner for TVNZ, they also reveal another trend: property shows rate best on broadcast TV. No property shows feature in TVNZ+\u2019s top 10 most watched list \u2013 instead, the most popular on-demand content in the past year (after 1News at 6pm) was international dramas The Day of The Jackal and The Rookie, kids\u2019 favourite Bluey and film The Substance. The rest of the on-demand top 10 list is filled with dramas Rogue Heroes, Shortland Street and Tulsa King, reality show Love Island UK and national institution Country Calendar.\u00a0<\/p>\n New Zealand streaming audiences tend to be younger, with viewers aged 15-49<\/a> more likely to watch on-demand content than linear TV. In contrast, 70% of viewers aged over 60 watch linear TV each day, with TVNZ1 the most popular linear channel. There\u2019s a parallel here with home ownership: 2023 census data shows that home ownership rates increase with age<\/a>, with the highest rates of home ownership occurring between the ages of 60-79.\u00a0<\/p>\n As younger generations become more pessimistic<\/a> about owning a home and first-home ownership becomes even more challenging<\/a>, it\u2019s understandable that these viewers are less inclined to watch shows about a life stage that feels out of reach. Watts says this generational divide makes sense, given we watch these types of shows because they reflect our own cultural values back to us, and help to shape our identities in relation to what we see on screen. \u201cThe kind of folks who are still watching terrestrial scheduled television are perhaps the ones who are also more likely to be interested in renovating the home that they own.\u201d<\/p>\n Property shows have been a fixture on New Zealand television screens for years, but it seems like the DIY-era of The Block NZ or Mitre 10 Dream Home is over. Now, we get to escape into someone else\u2019s life by watching their multimillion-dollar home search<\/a> on Find My Country House NZ or follow them building an expensive cliffside mansion<\/a> on Grand Designs NZ. But amid cost of living and housing crises, what if you\u2019re not into watching luxury, extravagant homes on the telly? Don\u2019t worry \u2013 there\u2019s always Country Calendar.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shows about houses may be a ratings winner for TVNZ, but they\u2019re becoming less relatable for younger audiences.\u00a0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1500,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[492,156,2456,2457,2458,111,139,69,2459,1066,2460],"class_list":["post-1499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-comments-enabled","tag-entertainment","tag-find-my-country-house-nz","tag-grand-designs-nz","tag-moving-houses","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-nzs-best-homes-with-phil-spencer","tag-pop-culture","tag-property-tv-shows"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Phil Spencer and some very big windows (Photo: TVNZ)<\/p>\n
Tom Webster visits a new home in a recent episode of Grand Designs NZ (Screengrab: TVNZ)<\/p>\n