Woodstock’s Corsinis back on HGTV with ‘Flipping Showdown’

Now they’re back on HGTV in a different capacity. This time, they are hosts, judges and investors in a reality competition show featuring professional flippers called “Flipping Showdown,” which debuts Wednesday at 9 p.m.

Three couples who flip homes for a living vie for $100,000 and a shot at working as a Red Barn franchise. Over six episodes, they each face three major flipping challenges within a set time and budget around metro Atlanta.

“As a flipper, you have to design not just creatively but practically,” said Anita last week at their home office in Woodstock.

Ken, her husband of 20-plus years, said “Flipping Showdown” has elements of “The Apprentice” because in their minds, this is a job interview, not just a reality competition. They had to purchase nine homes in a tight time period earlier this year for the contestants to fix up.

“We had to acquire all those properties and hold that much inventory while prepping for the show,” Anita said. “We invested $2.5 million. We handed our resources over to teams we don’t know. They had to make these houses marketable and profitable. It was nerve-wracking!”

What’s worse, just as the show was about to start production, the Corsini’s came down with COVID-19 in March, right before vaccines became widely available.

This delayed production three weeks.

“I had a fever for 14 days,” Anita said.

“I felt crummy,” Ken said. “It was like the flu.”

But they managed to get the show done on time in July.

Credit: HGTV

Credit: HGTV

Tonally, they said they feel like they were more business-like on this show vs. “Flip or Flop” because the stakes seemed even higher this time around.

“You don’t see as much of our goofy side,” Ken said. “You better spend our money well!”

“I was a teacher,” Anita said. “That side of me really comes out.”

Not that she said they were Gordon Ramsay in “Hell’s Kitchen.”

“We had a great relationship with the contestants,” Anita said. “We weren’t like, ‘Here comes the big bad wolf!’ We were there to provide feedback.”

The three key elements they sought were how well each team could pull off their own designs, how much money they could make in the flip and how well they worked with the general contractors. “They are going to be our brand ambassador,” Ken said. “We don’t want them mouthing off at the contractors.”

The budgets for each flip were kept super tight to see how each couple could handle the restraint. Ultimately, every team had to ask the Corsinis for more money on at least one project.

To save money, the teams often used basic elbow grease, doing some of the work themselves. To pocket extra cash, one team used Facebook to sell stuff in the house they didn’t need.

“We like people with initiative,” Anita said. “When I was a teacher, I’d see this sea of students. Not a lot of them had true initiative.”

They were especially impressed if a team could finish under budget and still accomplish what they were assigned to do.

They also gauged how well each team took advice. For instance, in the first episode, Anita brought up the need to add a pantry to one kitchen, which one couple didn’t initially consider.

“We walk through 20 homes and 15 of them have no proper-sized pantry,” Anita said. “Millennials don’t realize it’s not there. They haven’t lived on their own before. It became a running joke. Eventually, by the end, the teams would deliberately say, ‘This is where the pantry goes!’”

Credit: HGTV

Credit: HGTV

ON TV

“Flipping Showdown,” 9 p.m. Wednesdays on HGTV starting Nov. 17

Free viewing party from 7-10:30 p.m. at Reformation Brewery, 105 Elm St., Woodstock. For more info, go to reformationbrewery.com.