The Biggest Controversies in HGTV History

No amount of spackle can cover up the controversies that have plagued HGTV over the years. The cable channel, which is devoted to real estate and renovations, has gotten negative publicity over the years, usually because of an HGTV star facing allegations of bad behavior or bad workmanship. But in the first controversy in the timeline below, fans learned just how unreal one of the most popular HGTV reality shows really is…

2012: House Hunters’ production secrets are revealed

House Hunters fans discovered the disappointing reality behind the HGTV show after former participant Bobi Jensen told Hooked on Houses that she and her husband had already purchased their home by the time they filmed the show. Jensen also said House Hunters producers didn’t even accept them as subjects until they had closed on the purchase. The couple then had to pretend to be considering other houses, which actually belonged to family friends.

A publicist for the show responded to the claims by admitting some production shortcuts, telling Entertainment Weekly, “We’re making a television show, so we manage certain production and time constraints, while honoring the home buying process. To maximize production time, we seek out families who are pretty far along in the process. Often, everything moves much more quickly than we can anticipate, so we go back and revisit some of the homes that the family has already seen, and we capture their authentic reactions.”

2014: David and Jason Benham lose HGTV show following homophobic remarks

In 2014, HGTV bailed on its show Flip It Forward with twin brothers and real estate entrepreneurs David and Jason Benham after the website Right Wing Watch published anti-gay comments that David had made to a conservative radio host in 2012.

“We don’t realize that, okay, if 87% of Americans are Christians, and yet we have abortion on demand; we have no-fault divorce; we have pornography and perversion; we have a homosexuality and its agenda that is attacking the nation; we have adultery; we have all of the things; we even have allowed demonic ideologies to take our universities and our public school systems while the church sits silent and just builds big churches,” David told the radio host, per the website.

A day after that report, HGTV tweeted that it had “decided not to move forward with the Benham Brothers’ series.”

David attempted to explain his comments on CNN at the time, saying, “We love all people. I love homosexuals. I love Islam, Muslims, and my brother and I would never discriminate. Never have we — never would we. Never have I ever spoken against homosexuals, as individuals, and gone against them. I speak about an agenda. And that’s really what the point of this is, is that there is an agenda that is seeking to silence the voices of men and women of faith.”

2015: Ellen’s Design Challenge Season 1 ends in disqualification

In 2015, furniture designer Tim McClellan won and then lost Ellen’s Design Challenge Season 1’s $100,000 grand prize when producers disqualified him for allegedly copying another person’s desk design. Producers then awarded the victory and prize money to runner-up Katie Stout.

Fans criticized HGTV for its handling of the plagiarism allegation and for not letting McClellan defend himself on air, according to The Washington Post. Creator and executive producer Ellen DeGeneres then invited McClellan onto her talk show, where he said he accepted the decision but couldn’t recall ever seeing the other designer’s work.

“Preparing for this competition and over the last 20 years, I’ve looked at millions and millions of pieces of furniture,” McClellan added. “And it’s quite possible and looks as though that piece somehow got lodged in my memory.”

2016: Love It or List It homeowners say the show “irreparably damaged” their home

Homeowners featured on HGTV’s Love It or List It sued the show’s producers in 2016, alleging that the renovations “irreparably damaged” their North Carolina house after they invested $140,000 with production company Big Coat TV to make over the property, according to ABC News. Deena Murphy and Timothy Sullivan also claimed the production company misused more than $65,000 of that money.

A year later — and after Big Coat filed defamation claims that were dismissed by a judge — the case settled under undisclosed terms, per The News & Observer.

2016: Chip and Joanna Gaines’ pastor’s anti-gay views make headlines

A 2016 BuzzFeed News report exposed the anti-gay attitudes of Jimmy Seibert, the pastor of Antioch Community Church, an evangelical megachurch Fixer Upper stars Chip and Joanna Gaines were attending. In a sermon the previous year — following the Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage in all 50 states — Seibert had preached that homosexuality was a sin and could be converted to heterosexuality. Though it wasn’t known if the Gaineses shared their pastor’s beliefs, the BuzzFeed News report did note that the then-HGTV stars had never worked with a same-sex couple on Fixer Upper.

The couple also drew controversy in 2021 for donating $1,000 to Shannon Braun, Chip’s sister, in her campaign for a Texas school board seat on a platform that included opposition to critical race theory, per The Dallas Morning News.

The Gaineses addressed the backlash in a 2021 interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “The accusations that get thrown at you, like you’re a racist or you don’t like people in the LGBTQ community, that’s the stuff that really eats my lunch — because it’s so far from who we really are,” Joanna told the publication. “That’s the stuff that keeps me up.”

2016: Tarek El Moussa’s gun incident comes to light

In 2016, TMZ reported that then-married Flip or Flop costars Christina and Tarek El Moussa had split following an incident six months prior in which Tarek left their Orange County home with a gun and proceeded down a hiking trail before being confronted by 11 deputies and a helicopter. Tarek told the deputies he was only “blow[ing] off steam” and took the gun for protection from mountain lions and rattlesnakes, the site added.

“Like many couples, we have had challenges in our marriage,” Christina and Tarek told People. “We had an unfortunate misunderstanding about six months ago, and the police were called to our house in an abundance of caution. There was no violence, and no charges were filed.”

Tarek reflected on the incident in a 2024 interview with E! News. “I wasn’t doing good. I really wasn’t doing good … hated my life, hated myself. I just hated being alive. So I decided to go blow off steam, hike some trails. And next thing I know, there’s a rifle pointed at me. I’m like, ‘Oh, something’s really going on.’ I swear everything slowed down. It was like a movie, and there’s these dust clouds everywhere, 11 sheriffs come up, they pull out their guns, they have me at gunpoint, they’re screaming at me. And I’m thinking, ‘What in the world is going on?’”

2017: Carter Oosterhouse accused of coerced sex

A makeup artist who worked on Carter Oosterhouse’s HGTV show Carter Can alleged in 2017 that he coerced her into performing oral sex on her during production. Kailey Kaminsky told The Hollywood Reporter that she gave in to Oosterhouse’s demands after months of pressure from the TV host. “Then thereafter it was most every time we would shoot — 10 to 15 times he put me in this position,” she said.

Oosterhouse said in a statement to THR that he did have an “intimate relationship” with Kaminsky but said that it was “100% mutual” and that he “never would have done anything” that wasn’t “mutually agreeable.”

2019: Windy City Rehab’s legal saga begins

HGTV’s Windy City Rehab endured so much legal drama that the Chicago Sun-Times has a timeline of lawsuits, permit violations, and stop-work orders that impacted the show and its hosts. In 2019, for example, the show was hit with a stop-work order for doing construction without a permit, and then-cohost Donovan Eckhardt had his license suspended.

In 2020, Eckhardt and cohost Alison Victoria were sued for fraud by homeowners alleging shoddy construction on their $1.36 million home (in a suit that was later settled), Eckhardt was sued by a subcontractor alleging Eckhardt hadn’t paid him $108,500, another pair of homeowners sued the cohosts for alleged fraud and shoddy work (in a case that was later resolved), and investors sued them for allegedly running “a deliberate and fraudulent scheme to misappropriate funds.”

And in 2021, Eckhardt sued Discovery Inc. and production company Big Table Media, claiming he’d been falsely portrayed as the villain on the show, in a case that was later dismissed.