Summary
- In an interview with Collider, Drew and Jonathan Scott said today’s housing crisis is reshaping what buyers can afford and what a dream home looks like.
- Under Pressure focuses on buyers facing grief, tight budgets, and hard compromises—not glossy renovations with massive wish-list spending.
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The brothers say smart design now has to solve real-life problems first, from rental income to storage to long-term financial relief.
For years, Property Brothers stars Drew Scott and Jonathan Scott have been a comforting source for home renovation television. Their easy likability and genuine warmth toward others have made the chaotic process a little less intimidating, and it’s why their newest HGTV series, Property Brothers: Under Pressure, feels like such a natural fit for them. In the new 14-episode series, the brothers guide buyers through one of the most stressful housing markets in recent memory, where fierce competition, sticker shock, and deeply personal compromises can make finding the right home feel almost impossible. But as Drew and Jonathan explain to Collider, Under Pressure is about more than just house hunting.
“We’re in an unprecedented time when it comes to a housing crisis,” Drew explains during an afternoon call on St. Patrick’s Day. “Even for the affordability of a home nowadays in today’s market and the modern history of homes, there has never been a time like this where it’s not affordable for first-time home buyers or for anybody in general.”
For many of the families featured on the series this season, that dilemma is pretty immediate on top of all the overwhelming emotions they’re feeling. Whether it’s navigating unforgiving renovation budgets, learning how to generate income, or figuring out what comes after a monumental loss, Under Pressure leans into the reality that buying a home today isn’t just a milestone. It’s a high-stakes balancing act for so many families across the U.S.
Drew and Jonathan Scott Explain What Makes Buying a Home So Much Harder Now
For the Property Brothers, buying a home now is a puzzle few families can easily solve.
COLLIDER: So, talking about ‘Under Pressure,’ this show does focus on the most stressful parts of buying a home. What kind of pressures are buyers facing right now that maybe weren’t as intense when you guys first started helping families on TV?
DREW SCOTT: Yeah. When you think about it, we’re in an unprecedented time when it comes to a housing crisis. Even for the affordability of a home nowadays in today’s market and the modern history of home, there has never been a time like this where it’s not affordable for first-time home buyers or for anybody in general. And you look at people trying to get creative to see how they can get a home, whether it’s moving in together or getting a suite like what AJ and Carin did to be able to offset some of their costs. So it’s a puzzle to solve, but that’s why we’re there, to take that stress and help.
JONATHAN SCOTT: And especially for AJ and Carin, you look at their home, which was only less than two minutes away from where Zooey’s family home was that burned down. And so, I actually, at one point, took them over to my construction site, and I showed them what we’re building back, and some of the things we want to think about.
Editor’s Note: Jonathan later clarifies that AJ and Carin’s home is not the one located near his in-laws’ property; he had been referring to a different episode.
And I love that they were in the same boat, where, for a while, they were worried, “Do we even want to move back? Are our friends not going to move back?” And then they realized, “Our friends are moving back. That sense of community will be there.” In fact, this is even a better time for them all to lean on each other. So you really see those heartfelt, relatable stories throughout every episode.
Jonathan and Drew Scott are not mincing words.
And the premiere is so much more about just buying a home. It is what you guys said. They’re trying to rebuild after losing everything in the Eaton fire. How did that reality sort of change the way you approached them compared to more typical house-hunting stories?
DREW: I mean, just that the fire is one thing, but there are a lot of other people. They just can’t afford to live where they work. And it’s such a sad thing. You shouldn’t have to drive one to two hours each way every day. That’s just awful. Spend the time with family.
And so the budgets are the biggest difference, too, in the season. We didn’t take on… We had a lot of people who applied for the show that had massive budgets. We want to do a full renovation. We turned that down. We really wanted to work with the people who had nowhere else to go. They didn’t know what to do. We have budgets from $35,000 and up. And literally, Jonathan and I were banging our heads on the walls sometimes trying to figure out, “How can we make this happen within their budget?” I even took decking material from… I just redid my deck. I took all the extra material from my house and put it into one of the projects because the family needed a ramp for their daughter’s wheelchair. So it was a huge puzzle. And there were moments where Jonathan and I didn’t know if we were going to be able to do it. And you see that stress on camera.
How Property Brothers Made $35,000 Budgets Work in Their Most Emotional Series Yet
Why an $80,000 renovation has to work harder than ever in ‘Under Pressure.’
And the renovation budget in this episode is pretty tight. It’s like 80,000 to 90,000, which is, I think, very different for… I mean, I think about Toronto prices, but for LA, it’s probably the same. So what strategies do you guys use to make a relatively small renovation budget still feel very transformative? And I have to say that the ADU was amazing. So I really loved how you guys made it look minimal, but also exactly what it needed.
JONATHAN: Yeah, it was pretty incredible and used every square inch. I think the most important thing is you have to step back from the project and think about what is actually going to make life better, what will make your life easier. And everybody’s different. Everyone’s renovation is different. And so some people, they’ll focus too much on a nice-to-have, and they’ll spend a bunch of money on that when they don’t focus on a need-to-have. And so that’s how we like to break it down with our clients. And even in this season, you’ll see some people who push back, and they’re like, “Well, I don’t know if you’re right about that.” Trust me, I’m right. I’m right. When we make suggestions, I’m right. And you should try and find a way to get on board because we’re looking to set these folks up, not only for ease of lifestyle, but also for financial freedom in the future.
DREW: We don’t want them just to survive. We want them to thrive. And if you look at AJ and Carin, for example, that’s a house, ideally, would they want to be backed onto a train? Absolutely not. But they literally lost everything, and they didn’t have the money to get the house the size of the home that they needed for their family. And so for them, they were willing, that house that they get in that first episode, you’re going to see, they’re able to afford that place. And then, along with putting a suite into the basement, was what was making this house possible for them. They got the house they didn’t think they could afford. And so you have to think creatively. And we’ve done this for how many years has it been now? We started in the ’90s investing in real estate, early ’90s or mid ’90s.
JONATHAN: We were looking at some of the pictures from our first renovations, and I was laughing because, I mean, styles have changed. Well, actually, originally, we wouldn’t do all of the design finishes that we would do today. We would just do more of a renovation transformation, but not style it. So we were looking at some of our old pictures, and I’m like, “Ooh, looks like our renovation needs a renovation.”
DREW: Yeah, we learned a lot, and we made a lot of our own mistakes, and that’s what we want to pass on to people so they don’t have to make those same mistakes.
Property Brothers Explain Why Monthly Payments Matter More Than Ever Right Now
Drew and Jonathan say smart design starts with real-life problems.
Image via HGTV
I will say one thing I found interesting: watching the entire episode, I saw their definition of dream home changing, especially since it came from a place of grief, and it was like they were hesitant to move forward. Does that inform how you guys also look at their definition of dream home? Because I know you were very optimistic, you guys are always helping other people, but for them, sometimes they can’t see beyond the trees, and you guys are really there to help.
JONATHAN: Yeah. And it’s not funny, but this was a different situation because usually we can step completely back from whatever emotional journey the homeowners are going through, and we can help with these decisions. This happened so close to the fires and working with them, they actually bought a house… They wanted to stay within the Palisades, but they got a house that hadn’t been burnt down and just had smoke damage and needed some work done. So they were able to get in a lot faster. And so the whole idea of my family losing everything that they had was still very emotional for me. And so I was going through that journey at the same time. And so we had a lot of good conversations. We had a couple of cries, and we got through it. And I love that they’re in there, and they’re now a hub for their friends who are looking for support and want to get back into the community.
DREW: I mean, you can’t change these awful things that have happened to so many families. It’s just a matter of… I think it’s almost like creating a community of support. The more we talk about it, the more we walk through that, talk to them through what this house could become, and how we can get them past this hurdle. The more that they learn to embrace it and live with it and move on.
And I will say that the ADU isn’t just like a design feature. It really is tied to them having that rental income. And AJ brought up the fact that he… I think he had, for the first time, told his wife that, “By the way, we’re having some issues with caregiving, and I want to be able to have that money.” So was that one of the clearest examples this season of how personal and practical needs sort of collide under pressure because there’s a lot going on?
DREW: Oh, my gosh. Every family has a lot going on. Statistically, right now, the affordability crisis; it’s not people not being able to afford a home. It’s more that people can’t afford the monthly payments. And that’s not just the home, that’s everything else that comes along with life, right? So they’re a prime example; they needed that additional income. They wanted additional space for when their adult children come to stay at the house, but they wanted to still get some rental income. So that’s why they’re looking at a short-term rental. And I will say, I was arguing for a long-term because it’d be less headache for them, but for their specific situation, short-term rental made way more sense. So you’re going to see a lot of that.
And also, the entrance was shared. They come in the front entrance, so do the short-term tenants. So if we were to put a separate entrance in, that was going to be another, what was it? It was tens of thousands of dollars, whatever it was. It was a lot of money, and that would take them that much longer to recoup that money down the road. That’s not what they’re looking for. They need to recoup now.
Jonathan, there’s a moment also where you talk about how curated spaces can help guests feel more at ease. And you were showing the cabinetry in the bathroom and all that sort of stuff. How much psychology actually goes into the way you guys design a room?
JONATHAN: I approach it like reverse engineering from the problem that you’re trying to solve. And so a lot of psychology goes into it. Most people, I’ll walk into a house that’s been renovated, and we’ll look around, and I’ll think, “Has the person who designed this ever lived in a house? Because this makes no sense. Zero storage.” I’ve literally never had a client say, “You know what? We have too much storage.” It doesn’t exist. So there are certain things that you have to have. It has to be functional. Even for a short-term rental, they have family that is coming to visit, so they don’t want to have a permanent tenant down there. They want to be able to control that. And so that’s great. That’s a very specific type of renovation and offering that you have to have for someone who wants a short-term rental.
The ‘Property Brothers’ stars also warn of the dangers behind every ranch dream.
I will say a friend of mine went to see a home, and she said that it was the worst thing. And I was like, “The Property Brothers should have been there.” The bathroom, the toilet was where the door is. So when you open it, your knees would hit the door. And I was like—
DREW: Yeah. Oh my gosh.
JONATHAN: Even worse, we actually had a house… We found a house that we were touring, and it was so tight that the door hit the toilet bowl. So they cut out of the door like a little semicircle so that the door would pass the toilet. But then, when the door was closed, there was a peephole right down there.
Oh, no…
JONATHAN: It was so weird.
DREW: I think I posted on my social media just late last year, there’s also a house we were looking at. And they put saloon doors on wherever there were doors that put saloon doors, like the little things like this. And so they put it on the bathroom too. And it didn’t go all the way down. So there was a gap of like two feet under. And if you’re sitting on the toilet while your spouse or somebody’s on the bed or in the bedroom, they can watch you on the toilet through the saloon doors.
JONATHAN: That’s a hard pass for me.
Property Brothers Reveal the Moment That Still Means the Most To Them
“When we give the keys back over, we know we’ve changed their lives.”
Image via HGTV
I will say, in this episode, there was so much pressure to make the right choice, especially with everything they’ve lost. How do you help clients know when a home is truly right for them, even if it isn’t perfect on paper?
DREW: Sometimes we have to… It’s tough parenting, I feel, or we act like the therapist because they’re so stuck on something, we have to talk them out of what they’re stuck on, because it is not better for them. It’s not helping them, or it’s going to make it harder down the road for them. I don’t think I said this earlier, but one example is we had this couple — they love to hit the beach. I mean, she’s from Hawaii, and they always, they just love taking the kids to the beach. And they were stuck on this idea. The house had its laundry in the garage. And I said, “No, it needs to be upstairs on the bedroom level on the second floor because that’s where-“
JONATHAN: And there was a space for it up there as well.
DREW: Nope. They didn’t want to spend on the money on that. They were adamant that they had to have it downstairs. I said, “Okay, do me a favor. Let’s walk through an exercise.” So I talked them through it. “How many times a month do you go to the beach? Once or twice. How many times a month do you do laundry, especially with the kids? Once or twice a day.” And so when you start to talk people through whatever they get their mind stuck on, it starts to make them realize, “Oh, that’s why you’re the expert.”
Yeah. And also that scene where I think they can’t decide what tiles to pick, you guys come in, and you say like, “Jonathan, I think you made the decision. You’re like, we’re going to do these tiles if you can’t pick.” That’s very helpful sometimes. Because it can be overwhelming, especially with so much trauma kind of building in them, they can’t make that decision very straight.
JONATHAN: No, and even outside the trauma of a fire, homeowners just have a hard time making these decisions, and there are a lot of decisions that need to happen and a lot of decisions that have to happen fast. So you see everything. You see the good, the bad, and the stubborn. It is quite a process that’s only amplified by… The tensions are only amplified by the fires and the disaster they went through.
By the end of the episode, you can see the shift in both of them, which is so lovely to see. Again, this episode really made me tear up and cry because you get to really get to know this family, you get to hear from them how they’ve been feeling. And when they walk into that finished home, I think that is the part where I broke because of seeing how they can react to something so personal to them. Was seeing that emotional change the most rewarding part of the renovation for you?
DREW: Oh man, it was. I mean, it was heartbreaking at many points because they lost everything, and they are the sweetest couple. They’re just really, genuinely amazing people. And you can see them trying to hold a strong front for their family and for their neighbors and their friends and everybody. And they were cracking. They were falling apart because they didn’t know what to do. So to see them in the end with a sense of hope, that was the best part. I mean, we tear up. I mean, even now, thinking about what they went through, it tears me up.
JONATHAN: People always ask me, “What is your favorite part of the show?” And I mean, demolition is so much fun. I recommend it for anybody as a stress reliever. But my favorite part is definitely when we give the keys back over, and we know we’ve changed their lives; that’s pretty special.
Property Brothers: Under Pressure airs Sundays at 9 p.m. EST on HGTV, and streams the next day on HBO Max and discovery+.
This interview was edited and has been abridged for clarity and length.
For more inspiration, ideas, house tours, and product picks from Drew and Jonathan, visit their home and lifestyle hub www.drewandjonathan.com and their YouTube channel, Drew & Jonathan.