Vanessa Roman

By Connie Adair

Real estate has been very, very good to Vanessa Roman – as a buyer, a renovator, a seller, a lister and now host of a new television show, Reno vs Relocate.

For nine years Roman bought, renovated and sold houses in Victoria. When she moved to Nova Scotia three years ago, she got her real estate license but mainly so she could buy and sell her own properties. However, when people heard she was a real estate agent (she’s with Exit Realty Metro in Dartmouth) she says they wanted to hire her. The military relocation market also opened up. Roman’s husband, Major Jason Roman, is a helicopter pilot at CFB Shearwater.

In September 2010, Roman heard about a casting call, gave her husband the camcorder, put on some lipstick and recorded a five-minute unscripted video. She emailed the video. One hour after she hit the send button, the director called.

“He said, ‘Holy cow. You’re perfect’,” Roman says. “That was the easiest job I ever got.” However it wasn’t quite that simple. Hundreds of agents had applied and the company wanted to go through all of the tapes. From her initial application to her acceptance to her filming the show in Toronto took 18 months. “It was like winning the lottery. It’s fun, exciting and gives me the opportunity to talk about real estate.”

Roman now has 26 episodes of Reno vs Relocate under her belt. The show premiered on HGTV at the end of May.

“The show is different than anything else,” she says. In Act 1, Roman and co-host designer Robert Lewis are introduced to the problem and find out why the homeowner’s house no longer works for them. In Act 2, the homeowners decide if they are going to renovate or relocate. In Act 3, if they have chosen to renovate, their existing house is renovated. If they decide to relocate, Roman shows them four properties. Act 4 shows the result of the renovation or the homeowners in their new house.

Roman says her experience working in three very different real estate markets – Victoria, Halifax and Toronto – and her understanding of those markets, helps her make the show appealing to a broad market.

She says she thinks homes in Victoria are overpriced, but that Asian buyers do not see it that way. With real estate prices so much higher in other parts of the world, she says “it seems like a deal to pay $800,000 or $900,000 for a starter home.”

When she moved from Victoria to Halifax, she could understand. “We sold our starter home in Victoria and bought a home twice the size at half the cost (in Halifax).”

In Halifax, because houses are affordable and renovations take time to complete, homeowners are more likely to relocate. In Toronto and Victoria, where house prices are high, renovation often is the only option, she says.

Roman, who has a degree in economics, also studied journalism, specializing in television, but planned to stay behind the camera. She completed an internship with Entertainment Tonight in California but Reno vs Relocate is her first time in front of the camera.

The homeowners she has worked with on the show have been “great, humble and hospitable,” she says. “Each has been a unique experience but a good one.”

However she says she will always remember one couple and their two small kids “no matter how many seasons are filmed.” The couple decided to move and looked at a big house outside the city. They put their house on the market. The people who owned the country house came to their open house and told the couple that they had built the house. The original owners had four children and moved to the country when the house became too small. Now their children had grown and they wanted to move back, she says. “What a cool coincidence.”

It’s been a busy eight months for Roman, who worked for four days in Toronto then flew back to be with her husband and three children (one five and twins three years of age) for the rest of each week. “The 1½-hour flight is shorter than some Toronto commutes,” she says.

She credits a strong support system – her husband and her mother, who moved from the West Coast to help look after the children.

She also has a strong real estate support system, with a team in Toronto and a team in Halifax.

“Everyone is very excited for Vanessa and the new show. We wish everyone involved with the program the best of success,” says Joyce Paron, president – Canada, Exit Realty.

Reno vs Relocate airs Monday nights at 9 ET on HGTV. To watch full episodes, visit www.hgtv.ca.