This is apparent onUnsellable Houses, where their witty banter and palpable chemistry radiate through the television.
The Listspoke to the dynamic duo just before the premiere of their show’s second season.
Onyour website, it mentioned how you shared a room even when you didn’t have to.
And that was the same with us too; we never wanted to separate our bedrooms.
What are the positives and negatives to working with your sister?
Leslie: Lyndsay and I are together 24/7, even before we worked together.
Just like sharing our bedrooms when we grew up.
I think we even were together the night before her wedding and shared a bed.
I mean, we’ve always been inseparable.
Other than our honeymoons, I think we have not spent more than maybe 10, 15 days apart.
So we just are really close and we get each other; we annoy each other.
Already this morning, we’ve had to shut our door.
And I think it’s 40 years of a partnership.
And we’ve both been married 20 years.
So it’s a relationship that you really can’t describe.
And you get that having sisters.
I mean, it’s one [relationship] that is really difficult to copy.
So how do you balance one another out?
Lyndsay: Gosh, that’s a good question.
I mean, I’m more of a spender.
Leslie: Oh my gosh.
And I just gave her a look, and she goes, “Oh, okay.
Nope, we’ll wait.
We’ll wait.”
So she definitely likes to spend money and I keep her more in line.
I like to keep the money in the bank.
So we definitely balance each other out very well.
We’re moving forward all the time.
And Leslie’s a lot more conservative and she plays the game real well.
She’s in her lane.
She likes that comfort.
And I’m just a lot more of that wild spirit.
I mean, we don’t even have to talk.
It’s like creepy, and people around us hate it.
If we’re at a hangout, we are not allowed on the same team because we will dominate.
We don’t even have to communicate and we’re communicating.
We know what each other [is] thinking constantly.
So we read each other’s mind.
We can communicate just with our body language or our eyes.
I always know what she’s thinking.
Always, a hundred percent.
I don’t even have to guess; I know what’s in her head.
How do you think that affects your work and the show?
Because we just communicate really well that way.
And we also tend to know what the other one… What direction they want to take it.
And Leslie really stays in her lane of her strengths and I stay in my lane of my strengths.
And we still complement each other and challenge each other a lot.
I’ll push on her and she pushes on me.
And exactly what you see in the show is really our life.
We push on each other constantly.
Lyndsay: So I got into real estate a few years before Leslie did.
And I just knew I wanted to get into it.
Leslie then joined me a couple years later.
Actually, my son had gotten sick; he had cancer.
And so I had kind of pulled back a little bit.
She knew I loved my business.
I loved what I had built in a short period of time.
So she jumped in and said, “Hey, let me get my license.
So she got her license very quickly and jumped right in.
And then her and I just…
It was like a powerhouse, the two of us together.
And the business just exploded from that point forward.
With the two of us together, it was like, forget it.
you’re able to’t hold us back.
We just started building business, after business, after business and we loved it.
Oh my gosh, that’s such a nice story.
I’m so happy that your son’s okay.
Lyndsay: Yeah, it was a pretty incredible experience.
The fact that she just jumped in and really saved this business.
What made you start filming those?
Leslie: I think Lyndsay and I are just fun personalities.
We love having fun with people.
And we could take some of that stress off of the process for them.
So one day, back in the day when we used to drive people around… Leslie: Actually, I think…
I think, were we in your dining room?
We were sitting at Lyndsay’s dining room table.
Would you guys be interested in talking to us?
We’d be interested in seeing if you guys would be a good fit for a TV show.”
And we thought it was a joke.
And we said, “Oh, sure, why not?”
And we did a Zoom call with them.
And then another couple months went by.
So every time we would hear from them, we were like, “You know what?
We didn’t really put a lot of eggs in the basket or really think about it much.
We just kind of walked through each step as it came.
It always seemed to be the right timing at the right place.
So yeah, it worked out just as it was supposed to.
Leslie: There are a lot of things that can make a house unsellable.
So you have a very short amount of time to get them interested.
Because everybody thinks that there’s something wrong.
So I think not marketing it and not presenting it well is one of the biggest mistakes people make.
So talk aboutstaging a homebecause I thought that was really interesting in the show.
Why is that so important?
Plus staging a home can be a very emotional…
It can have a very emotional effect on a buyer.
So it becomes incredibly emotional for the buyer.
As well as, we’re showing them exactly how they can use the space.
So it’s really important that a space be shown to a buyer.
What are some things that surprised you in the process?
They want you to look different, not like it’s the same day constantly.
So I’ve had to embrace buying clothes, which is not my normal.
Lyndsay loves to buy clothes.
Leslie: You got to, man.
You got to definitely invest some money into some new wardrobe for sure.
Lyndsay: I felt like I already had it…
I loved that part of it.
I thought that part was awesome.
I was like, “This is awesome.
I get to use everything that’s already in my closet.
And I get to change my outfit four times a day…
I’m living my dream right now.”
What are some behind-the-scenes little glimpses it’s possible for you to give us into how it’s filmed?
Leslie and Lyndsay: [at the same time] Oh, yeah.
Six… What do they call them?
“Themes,” or…
Lyndsay: Oh, yeah.
What do they call those “blocks” or six… Whatever.
I don’t know.
Leslie: Yeah, there’s six sections to the show.
It either wasn’t…
It didn’t make sense to the storyline or it was redundant.
They didn’t find it entertaining when they were putting the show together.
So they end up using it for just advertising or something.
Maybe 15, 20 hours for that show, I mean, would be my guess.
How fans have responded to Unsellable Houses
You filmed this season during COVID, right?
Lyndsay: Yes, we did.
And it actually was quite interesting the way that they had that set up.
So we lived kind of in a little pod of just our crew.
So we would be tested a couple of times a week.
It was just a lot different than Season 1, but thankfully we stayed safe the entire time.
Nobody on the crew got sick.
The show’s first season premiered in February of last year, right?
What feedback have you been getting from fans?
We’ve been getting awesome feedback.
“Could you explain how you did that?”
So we helped a lot of people just kind of spruce up spaces across the country.
So that’s been really fun.
Thank you so much”…
So it’s going really well.
Let’s talk about the new season.
I know the episodes are longer and your families are in it more.
You met your husbands in high school, right?
Do your families help out behind the scenes?
So it’s just fun stuff, showing more of our family.
So that’s a really cute scene.
Between Leslie and I, there’s four boys.
So you just get to see life with our four sons and our husbands.
You get to see the business as a whole grow.
So opening up a retail store, working more with design clients.
A lot more of just the business as a whole growing.
Season 2 ofUnsellable Housespremieres Tuesday, March 30 at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HGTV.
