"Fixer Upper" Clients Cash Out By Renting Their Homes
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NORTH TEXAS (CBSDFW.COM) - Chip and Joanna Gaines have caught the attention of viewers everywhere with their HGTV cable television series Fixer Upper, which documents the couple renovating homes for clients in Waco.
And now, fans can stay in one of the very homes the Gaines' have fixed up, according to the Waco Tribune.
Several homeowners featured on the show have turned their homes into vacation rentals, with some even buying a new home to live in. Fans from all over the country have flocked to the six Fixer Upper homes currently listed on online property rental services VRBO (Vacation Rentals By Owner) and Airbnb, according to the newspaper.
The Gaineses themselves tapped into the potent combination of Fixer Upper popularity and the convenience of online booking when they renovated a McGregor house into a bed and breakfast named the Magnolia House. Mere hours after online reservations were made available to fans in February, the Magnolia House had booked customers throughout 2016, according to the Waco Tribune.
So how does the vacation rental trend sit with the charismatic duo? Magnolia spokesman Brock Murphy said the following in a statement to the Waco Tribune:
We have no problems with our clients' interest in using sites like VRBO and Airbnb to rent out their homes. In fact, we get it. But we are going to be more strict with our contracts involving Fixer Upper clients moving forward.
We want to honor our national viewing audience. We want to do remodels for clients' homes. That's the true intent of our show, and we want to ensure that does not get lost in this new vacation rental trend.What started off with perfectly understandable intentions could cast a shadow of a doubt on the much bigger picture, and we are going to do our best to protect that moving forward.
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