Betting on the house

Kelley Alexander, a 47-year-old mother, is appearing on a new reality television series with something unusual at stake: her Sherman Oaks house.

If she and her sister can beat four other neighborhood families on HGTV’s new reality show “$250,000 Challenge,” which debuts at the end of the month, Alexander gets a quarter-million-dollar windfall, which she says is enough to save her from a looming foreclosure. But if she loses the contest, the home, which she shares with her two teenage children, will likely be gone.

“We have a bad mortgage,” said Alexander as a small army of camera operators and production assistants prepared to shoot more footage outside the sliding-glass doors of her bedroom. “On the first day of [the show], they put foreclosure papers on my door.”

Alexander, a divorcee whose ex-husband has helped support the family with his income as a TV writer, doesn’t live in the Inland Empire, where foreclosure rates have been among the highest in Southern California. She lives on a leafy street in what was once a solidly middle-class neighborhood in Sherman Oaks. But an economy that’s afflicted even once-secure families has her turning to a reality show for financial salvation.

In better times, reality television about real estate usually meant shows about lavish home design, rescuing neglected properties and even building brand-new homes for families down on their luck. But HGTV saw an opportunity amid the rubble of a crumbling economy to lend a helping hand to the middle class.

The new show, hosted by Drew Lachey and starting May 31, is fully embracing the consequences of the recession. It has families compete in a series of weekly home improvement and design challenges with the winner ultimately walking away with a newly renovated home and the huge cash prize. (The network says a second season is in the works.)

“A lot of these homes need updating. And people are nervous about spending money because of falling [real estate] values,” said Amy Quimby, the director of original programming at HGTV, as she stood on the street outside the Alexanders’ home. “These are everyday people that needed a leg up.”

The financially distressed, of course, have plenty of company these days. For February, median home prices in Los Angeles County fell a whopping 37% to $295,000 compared with the same period a year earlier, according to research firm DataQuick. The recession is bad everywhere, but the local economy has been especially ravaged by labor unrest and a massive production slowdown in the film and TV industries, according to Jack Kyser, an economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.

“It’s going to be a slow recovery,” Kyser said.

During the frothy years of the real-estate bubble, as ordinary homeowners sought a slice of the good life, interior designers were toasted like rock stars on reality series such as Bravo’s (since-canceled) “Top Design” and HGTV’s “Design Star.” The seductions of real-estate investing -- a sleek, go-go world in which property values would supposedly never halt their vertiginous climb -- have been covered on TLC’s “Property Ladder,” A&E;’s “Flip This House” and Bravo’s “Flipping Out.” And the careers of young agents angling to sell posh Beverly Hills estates have been lavishly detailed on Bravo’s “Million Dollar Listing.”

Of course, not every design show has glorified residential opulence. Well before the downturn, ABC’s hit “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” went in the other direction, spinning tear-jerking tales of stressed homeowners lucky enough to win a quickie remodel for their formerly not-so-fabulous homes.

But it was the ordinariness of the Alexanders’ neighborhood that made it appealing to the producers. “Yes, we’re in California, but this is like Middle America,” said executive producer SallyAnn Salsano, amid the stucco cottages and single-story bungalows on both sides of the street. “It’s not like some palm-lined Beverly Hills street.”

While the recessionary concept behind the show may strike some as opportunistic and distasteful (when news of “$250,000 Challenge” broke in early April, comments at the Huffington Post website criticized it as “ghoulish,” “cheap” and “shameful”), the HGTV show offers participants a potential benefit -- namely, that quarter-million-dollar jackpot -- that far offsets any loss of privacy.

Even if that includes giving a national TV audience a window into some of the least attractive corners of their homes and personal lives.

“Things are getting really, really tight,” said Lisa Duvernay, a 43-year-old stay-at-home mom, as she busily packed up her cookware and other items for a speed-redesign challenge. Each family gets $20,000 and 32 hours to revamp their kitchens.

Duvernay’s husband, Fabian, was laid off when his music-industry position in Hollywood relocated to New York. The mortgage balance on their home, where they have lived for 14 years, stands at nearly $400,000 and they have no health insurance for their girls, ages 10 and 12. Fabian’s unemployment checks are due to stop soon.

“It really has my insecurity level up,” he said. Referring to the show, he added: “This has been the opportunity of a lifetime.”

A few houses down, Jeff and Elizabell Marquez, thirty-ish newlyweds with the good looks of top fashion models, are in somewhat better financial shape. Both have MBAs and have kept their corporate marketing jobs. But the couple want children, and the plunging housing market has taken a harsh toll on their pocketbook. They paid $740,000 for their modest home in early 2008 and have watched its value ebb ever since.

“It’s lost $100,000,” Elizabell said with a pained expression.

“More than that,” pointed out her husband.

But for Kelley Alexander, struggling to outrun the foreclosure process, the show is about more than just making up for lost value. It’s about the hope of hanging onto her home.

“It’ll take about $50,000 to save the house,” she said, estimating the money needed to stave off foreclosure.

She is well aware that, as the only team of two single women on “$250,000 Challenge,” she and her older sister Phyllis stand out. But that’s only increased her resolve. “I feel like we’re underdogs,” she said.

Phyllis agreed. “We’re kind of a symbol here.”

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scott.collins@latimes.com