Bought Without Looking?

I'm really not averse to a bit of schadenfreude on TV, you know. But some things really go too far. I used to chuckle at Funniest Home Videos. Clumsy people falling, funny animals, babies doing funny things, that sort of stuff. But that's of course meant to be funny, but with shows like First Dates, I can secretly enjoy the vicarious embarrassment or awkwardness. A kind of train wreck: you want to look away, but actually you don't. Long Live Love on SBS is by the way really the king of this kind of shows and I can recommend it to anyone who also relishes this awkwardness.

But there are limits. Some things are really not okay. Now I don't often watch shows like Buying Without Looking myself, but it's quite a hit: yesterday 1.5 million people watched Amsterdam's Job and Denise, who signed a purchase contract for a house in Alkmaar without looking.

Job and Denise had a second child and unless you're about a millionaire, you're not going to find a suitable purchase home in Amsterdam. So they made the decision to move to Alkmaar, where you can buy a family home for much less. Maybe even with a garden. Where kids can just play in the street. Their budget was 425,000 euros and Alex van Keulen, also known as a television realtor, found an extremely suitable property. Or so he thought.

First of all, before I start telling what was wrong with the property: which self-respecting realtor doesn't check in advance whether the house is worth its money? Or if everything is correct? Or if, for example, there are no woodworms that eat everything away and which are really gi-gantic expensive to get rid of? Because yes, those woodworms were there, and those signatures under the purchase contract were there too. Job and Denise became the not-so-proud owners of a wreck in Alkmaar.

But anyway, it was already quite a rough diamond: Job and Denise themselves said that they wouldn't have dared to make the purchase without the TV program... A hundred thousand to fix all 42 (!) defects that came from the building report was not enough. The oh-so-desired extension didn't happen. There was no money left for the attic. But all's well that ends well: Job and Denise are ultimately happy and that's what it's all about. And, notably, they have no regrets about their participation. Well, not for me.