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Real estate experience captured for TV

Roxanna Thompson
Northern News Services
Published Thursday, September 3, 2009

LIIDLII KUE/FORT SIMPSON - All Danny Ragan wanted was to buy a condo in Edmonton but through a series of events he wound up featured on a reality TV show.

Ragan's real estate experience was televised in an episode of House Hunters International. The show on Home and Garden Television (HGTV) follows house hunters and realtors as they look at architectural styles and work through the process of buying real estate in Canada and abroad.

NNSL Photo/Graphic

Danny Ragan stands in the kitchen of the new condo in Edmonton he purchased while being filmed for an episode of the television show House Hunters International. - photo courtesy of Danny Ragan

Ragan's experience started innocently enough. Originally from High Prairie, Alta., Ragan has been a helicopter pilot with Great Slave Helicopter in Fort Simpson for the past five years.

Ragan works on a cycle of four weeks on the job before spending two weeks off in either Edmonton or High Prairie. He was looking for a place in Edmonton so he could stop imposing on friends for a place to sleep.

"I didn't want to ask any more favours of my friends," he said.

It was actually a friend from high school, Lisa Baroldi, who introduced Ragan to Karen Stanko, a realtor with Sterling Real Estate.

Coincidentally, Stanko had been looking for someone to use as a subject for the show and Ragan was in the right price range and his job as a helicopter pilot added some personal interest. It was Baroldi who asked Ragan if he'd like to be on T.V.

"Not really I said," Ragan recalls.

In the end Ragan agreed to the idea as a favour.

"It was something (I said) I'd never do in my whole entire life but it was okay once you got into it," he said.

For a week in March a film crew followed Ragan and Stanko around Edmonton as they looked at three different condos. In each building the cameras rolled as they discussed the pros and cons of the layout, decor, appliances, location and other details of the condo.

"It was surprisingly fun," said Ragan about the experience.

Ragan said he enjoyed meeting the show's producer Mary McCrone who has also worked on other shows including the Tyra Banks Show and Fox Sports.

"She was cool," he said.

At the end of the episode Ragan makes a decision about which of the condos he's buying and explains the reason for his choice. The final scenes show a house warming party in the now decorated condo that Ragan had to organize a month after the original filming.

The episode aired in the U.S. on Aug. 9 but Ragan isn't sure if it has reached Canada yet. Friends and relatives have seen a taped copy.

"Everyone think it's funny," he said.

Ragan said it was a different kind of experience watching himself in the episode.

"It's kind of weird watching yourself on TV," he said. "I laughed at myself a lot."

As for the condo, Ragan said it is perfect.

"I love my new place. It's beautiful," he said.