Because Home at first sight is our new guilty pleasure

Each has its own guilty pleasurethat secret passion that is often not mentioned for fear of appearing strange and against the tide and making a bad impression. Ours are the houses. That will be why, as we watched Tar, the wonderful film by Todd Field, we tried to calculate how many square meters Cate Blanchett’s mammoth apartment was extensive; or maybe this is why, in Ferzan Özpetek’s films, it has always been those living rooms and terraces that often go beyond their owners’ budgets that strike us. It goes without saying that when Real Time launched a new program entitled Home at first sightwe fell in love with it instantly, not only because we witness the presentation of houses and villas of different sizes and designs up close, but also because we manage to go for a swim in that rough and dangerous ocean which is the real estate market of one of the most forbidding cities in Europe and, perhaps, in the world: Milan. The format, adapted in Italy by Blu Yazmine, works like this: two customers present themselves to the program with the request for a specific houseincluding logistical details (district, luminosity, walk-in closet, barbecue corner, etc.) and with a budget beyond which they cannot go beyond.

At that point, three real estate agents start looking for a house capable of satisfying their requests by challenging each other: the agent who manages to win the hearts of the two customers with his proposal wins. Home at first sight is as simple as it is effective: beyond the variety of customers – fortunately it is possible to find both the high-ranking couple who have no intention of spending more than one million and 800 thousand euros, but also the girl who dreams of the apartment of her dreams in the center but has a budget of 200,000 euros – the charisma of the three agents makes the difference: Mariana D’Amico, Ida Di Filippo and Gianluca Torre. Everyone has their own style and their own way of approaching work to captivate customers and get them on their side. There’s Ida who relies entirely on sympathy and originality – such as preparing a pizza to be launched in the wood-burning oven in time for possible buyers to taste it -; there is Mariana who flaunts her charm thanks to high heels and tight-fitting suits, and, finally, there is Gianluca, the most self-confident and the most rigorous of her.

The result is a winning format in its linearitysince the thing that immediately catches the eye of Home at first sight it is both the mapping of the proposed houses and apartments and both humanity that decides to turn to a television program to buy the home it has always dreamed of living in. Seeing the perplexed faces of customers when they see details – from the faded bathroom tiles to the irregularity of the parquet – that they don’t like and observing the attempts of real estate agents to make houses very far from the center and with the tram tracks just a few meters the real added value of the format, which will also have episodes in Rome with three other agents – that is Nadia Mayer, Blasco Pulieri and Corrado Sassu -. From luxury to down-to-earth, from reigning snobbery to the daydreams of disenchanted shoppers who could very well be us, Home at first sight it’s the gem we didn’t know we needed, and that we hope will have more seasons than Trails.

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