Da House Beautiful
In 2010, Tarek El Moussa sent a sales pitch video to HGTV for a new show where he and his then wife, Christina, would buy decadent homes, repair and put them back on the market for a higher price. The funny thing is that, although El Moussa ventured to renovate, he had never really “ransacked” a house to make a profit before. When HGTV loved his idea, he learned quickly – and Flip or Flop was born.
To date, the 39-year-old man has sold more than 300 homes. Besides Flip or Flop (who will return for a tenth season in 2021!), El Moussa is also the star of HGTV’s Casting 101, where he shows novice flippers the basics of renovating a home for profit. He also launched a commercial real estate company, TEM Investments, as well as his own real estate seminar program, Homemade Investor.
It’s safe to say that El Moussa knows a lot about houses now, But it was not always so. We did a little research on Tarek El Moussa’s previous properties – from the first house he bought in his early twenties, to his current home, which he is currently in the process of renovating. Let’s take a look at all the properties that Tarek El Moussa has owned.
Your $ 800,000 single apartment
In 2002, Tarek El Moussa officially became a home owner at the age of 21. He described the first place he bought with his own money (or rather, the bank’s money) in a post he wrote as a guest to Realtor.com.
“It was the perfect single apartment – 1,400 square feet, huge master bedroom, men’s cave just for me and, coolest of all, a 300-gallon shark tank (should I remember I was 21 at the time?)” , He wrote.
The problem was that the asking price for the house was over $ 800,000 and he had set a budget for himself of $ 400,000. However, he did not give up and instead took out a $ 800,000 loan and moved on. “I was very, very broke. Without money to buy furniture, I ended up living in an empty house for almost nine months,” he wrote about the house, which he called “a disastrous mistake”.
In the years that followed, he would meet his wife Christina while working at a real estate company. He would end up selling his cave as a man and move into an apartment with her. Although the exact year they started dating is not known, it was before 2008, when they revealed that they were living together in an apartment with a $ 6,000 monthly mortgage before the recession.
Once the recession hit, they downsized to an apartment rental of $ 700 a month (with a roommate) and sold their luxury cars for more modest ones. They also lived on shared subway trails, according to the Orange County Register. After they got married in 2009, things started to get better for them.
Your family home with Christina Anstead
“I clearly remember my first home ride: it was May 2010, when Christina was five months pregnant,” wrote El Moussa on Realtor.com. Ultimately, that first move was your ticket to success. “While we were renovating this house, we made a home video and I had the crazy idea of sending it to the production companies to see if it could be turned into a reality show,” he continued.
After landing, he landed his own show, which we know today as Flip or Flop, the couple also had enough money (finally!) to invest in a home. In 2013, they purchased the six-bedroom home located at 19917 Trotter Ln in Yorba Linda, CA, where their family and career with HGTV would continue to grow.
According to Realtor.com, they purchased the property on December 30, 2013, for $ 2 million. While living there, they disbursed an additional $ 1.5 million to transform the house’s backyard into an island oasis complete with dining area, pool and fire pit.
Unfortunately, El Moussa and Anstead announced that they were getting divorced in late 2016. Their former family home was sold for $ 2.925 million in 2018.
Your “bad decision” yacht
Alright this technically it is not one of El Moussa’s houses. However, after splitting from Anstead, he spent a lot of time at sea in his 50-foot Sea Ray Sundancer 510. The luxury yacht, which cost just under $ 1 million, has two bedrooms and bathrooms. Although he originally called it “Flip or Flop” in honor of HGTV’s hit show, he ended up renaming it to something a little more appropriate: “Bad Decisions”, as he said People in 2017.
Eventually, this purchase brought him some luck, however. The single, father of two, met his current fiancee, Heather Rae Young, on July 4, 2019, when he was on “Bad Decisions”. He saw her aboard a neighboring yacht and decided to jump off the ship (literally) to meet her.
Your Single Father
On land, El Moussa moved to a four-bedroom home in Costa Mesa, California, which was just blocks from Anstead’s new home after the split. This made it much easier to share custody of their two children, Taylor and Brayden El Moussa.
The four-bedroom, 3.5-bath mansion cost him $ 2,280,000. The single father decorated it with bold colors, with a more masculine appearance than the last house he owned with Anstead. When he started dating Young, they moved in together in a week. However, his time was divided between living in this house and his apartment, which was located in West Hollywood, CA.
Your “intermediate” rental
After nine months of dating, Young and El Moussa sold their respective homes and moved into a rental in Newport Beach, CA. The 3,700 square foot home has five bedrooms and five bathrooms. He currently lives here with Young, as well as his children, when they are not with their mother.
In June, El Moussa revealed that “this is our intermediate home until we build or find the perfect home”. On a video tour of the house, he showed how this new apartment was suitable for the family. The family room is equipped with armchairs for children to rotate, as well as a sofa in front of a TV set above a large fireplace. In the area in front of the fireplace, he made sure to get tables with wheels so that he could roll them out of the way and make room to fight with his children. The house has a yard for children to play, as well as a swimming pool.
Your future home
Last September, El Moussa and Young officially became the owners of their first home, which is also located in Newport Beach, California. While buying a home is not uncommon for a future Mr. and Mrs., this purchase was not really planned. As a representative of the previously informed couple People, “Tarek originally bought it as a flip, but then they decided to make it their new home.”
That said, the couple is currently renovating the house together – although there is no timetable for when they will actually move. Not to mention that they encountered a major obstacle in the renovation process last month after the house flooded. “We had to tear off the roof, the kitchen and also the laundry room … and a lot of other things,” said Young in an Instagram Story. She also revealed that the roof was gone.
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