Flip or Flop Information

Flip or Flop is a television series airing on HGTV hosted by real estate agents and real-life husband and wife Tarek and Christina El Moussa, and the original show in the Flip or Flop franchise.

Premise

The El Moussas were both real estate agents prior to the crash in 2008, and later they began flipping homes, mostly in Orange County, California.

In 2011, Tarek asked a friend to help him make an audition tape for HGTV. The friend filmed an entire episode of the process of house flipping from start to finish. The audition tape was sent to HGTV, and they were interested in talking to the couple. In 2012, HGTV signed the couple to a regular weekly program that shows the process of buying distressed property and renovating it.

Christina's expertise is primarily in design, and she works with Tarek to find and renovate homes. She handles the designs of the new spaces and keeps everything on schedule. The show follows them as they buy homes, typically bank-owned, short sales or foreclosures, to renovate and resell.

Hosts

Personal life

Tarek El Moussa grew up in Buena Park, California and Christina Meursinge Haack grew up in Anaheim Hills. Tarek, who earned his real estate license at age 21, met Christina while working in the real estate industry. The couple were selling real estate in the Southern California area when the housing market plummeted after the October 2008 stock market crash; they went from living in a $6,000 per month home to a $700 per month apartment.

The couple married in 2009 and have two children, a girl named Taylor Reese and a boy named Brayden James.

In 2013, a registered nurse and viewer, Ryan Reade contacted the network after seeing a lump on Tarek's neck during a Flip or Flop marathon. Tarek had previously had the lump examined, and he said there was no issue. After Reade contacted producers, Tarek had the lump checked again; doctors discovered that he had stage 2 thyroid cancer. The El Moussas thanked Reade in a video that can be seen on HGTV.com.

In May 2016, the couple had secretly split due to "challenges" in their marriage. In January 2017, Tarek officially filed for divorce from Christina.

Real estate career

Today, Tarek and Christina run a real-estate agency, "The El Moussa Group", in Orange County, California, an area with one of the largest foreclosure rates in the country. Tarek, Christina, and their partner Pete De Best, bought their first investment house in Santa Ana for $115,000. After selling the property for a profit of $34,000, the trio split the money and continued to flip houses, expanding their real estate investing business into Arizona and Nevada.

Series overview

See List of Flip or Flop episodes for more information