<prompt> Human: Hey all, Im currently renting an apartment with my girlfriend in NYC. If all goes according to plan in a few years wed probably be looking for a home in the suburbs. We both love the shows on HGTV and enjoy the idea of getting more out of our money by buying a cheaper house and fixing it up. While Im sure with enough money we can get anyone to do anything, but I was wondering how close we can get to this experience? I imagine working with real contractors to be a lot more expensive than the show lets on, or are the budgets that they spend on a kitchen the same that I could expect to pay? And is there some kind of construction or renovation mortgage that all gets tied together, or would one need the down payment of the house, and the thousands of dollars available for a renovation?Im sure not everyone are D.I.Y. experts, so does anyone have any experience with situations like these?  <response>: what you see on TV is more often made profitable by product placement and such. this is especially evident in the house hunter shows where they tell you that a inner city teacher makes 90k a year and her husband is self employed and makes 125K a year and they buy and renovate a huge house for 600K budget. they either make up numbers or they are in fact renovating their own house and they fake the buying the house montage.not only that but many of the people who bought those houses featured on fixer upper and other shows have said they are sparsely insulated and have other massive problems to the point one of the shows was sued because they had to be scrap the house because it was considered unfix-able and defective. many participants have said that the rooms they show are staged with expensive rented furniture which they did not get to keep. so what they ended up with was more basic upgrades to their house or as previously stated a home thats in worse condition.i could go on but the truth is what you see on those shows are TV magic and not necessarily examples of true DIY power 