Fans of St. John enjoyed this week’s House Hunters International TV show featuring the island and how Stacey and John Alvarado made the move from St. Thomas to St. John.
But some elements of the show showed the producers may not understand the island.
For instance, there was a picture of a monkey among the island’s flora and fauna and beauty. “I absolutely love monkeys, but I may just fall over and die if I ever came across one in St. John,” said CTBeachGirl on the Virgin Island On-Line forum. “I’ve seen plenty in Costa Rica and Belize, but in St. John??? Definitely not.”
Some people commented that it was odd Realtor John McCann showed the Alvarados a one-bedroom unit at Grande Bay, when they have a young child and two dogs. “Ill-fitted to their needs and less than ideal,” said Coconuts on the forum.
Then there was the narrator’s reference to the Gifft Hill area being a suburb of Cruz Bay. “Had a good laugh about that),” said NC Brenda.
RonUSVI said the show was great. “I laughed at Stacey’s objection to the noise so many times and that tickled me was her worry at Grande Bay if there was a tidal surge to get up to the level of the apartment they were looking at.” Ron added, it was a “good promo for STJ and Grande Bay as well.”
HGTV has not scheduled the episode for re-broadcast. The Inquiring Iguana will keep his eye out for a repeat.
- Disclaimer: John Alvarado is the Director of Sales at Grande Bay, and is an advertiser on NewsofStJohn.com.
Frank, I was there for the entire shoot. The realtor showed a one bedroom plus studio, at the producers request. They edited out the studio entirely– pretty impressive feat of editing but I agree that it looks dumb on TV.
For anyone who thinks this show has much to do with reality, please google “is house hunters real or fake?” You will be surprised at what you read. Then again most reality TV takes some very strong liberties with the facts. (Does anyone really think Gifft Hill is noisy?!) House Hunters is no exception.
I thought they did a good job with the show and made StJohn look beautiful and nice.
“Disclaimer: John Alvarado is the Director of Sales at Grande Bay, and is an advertiser on NewsofStJohn.com”
Sweet – free advertisement…
This explains a lot of the misinfo…
So John, what are the HOA fees for the 1Bd GB villa?
@HHF – btw, my brother is in the ‘Biz’ (production manager) – so I certainly realize that this is far from ‘Reality’, but it certainly makes one wonder that they would show a GB villa to the Director of Sales of GB as a naive buyer to a villa that would NEVER meet their needs. Now that is extremely unethical – I was wondering why they didn’t discuss what the buyers occupation like the usually do.
Sad – that we didn’t get to see another house instead of a villa that someone would have to be crazy to buy at Developer prices (wait for resales if they are able to sell that many…)
This was clearly a ‘pay to play’. Very unethical. I will never watch the show again.
was it me or did they label Hawksnest Beach as St Thomas in the very beginning?
Yes it was Hawknest with Gibney in the beackground – that was one of many inaccuracies – this is not uncommon for House Hunters, but the whole GB segment was way beyond ‘Reality’.
Wish we could afford to live on StJ for at least 4-6 months per year.
I watched this show one time before and was amazed at the lack of professionalism of the realtor who completely ignored the couple’s budget and needs in that episode. Showed them homes that were way above what they could afford and then spent the rest of the show giving them the hard sell on why they should get in over their heads. Never watched again.
LOL, this show is completely scripted. Participants used to get $500 to have the cameras follow them around. The end result has always been in place, no BIG decision is ever made. I love to watch to see all the international places.
There is a short clip of this episode (Season 26, Episode 108) on YouTube:
http://www.yidio.com/show/house-hunters-international/season-26/episode-108/2951745638
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