Snohomish sisters shine in new season of ‘Unsellable Houses’

SNOHOMISH — The housing market has changed, but the show goes on for Lyndsay Lamb and Leslie Davis.

The third season of the Snohomish twins’ hit HGTV series “Unsellable Houses” premieres Tuesday with 13 weeks of one-hour episodes.

Home sales have surged the past three three years, as has the popularity of the 41-year-old twins. The show’s second season had 32 million viewers, according to the network.

The focus is local. All of the homes on “Unsellable Houses” are in Snohomish County.

The original premise of the show was that the real estate sisters invest their own money to give a modest house a major makeover, then split the excess profits with sellers, who are part of the show.

There’s no such thing as a modest — or an unsellable — house these days. The goal is to get top dollar. Sales range from $550,000 to over $1 million.

“Our prices have absolutely changed this season: The actual price of the home and what we are investing into the home, because materials have gone up,” Davis said.

The savvy sisters got ahead of the supply shortage.

“We invested in a 18,000-square-foot warehouse in north Everett to start purchasing appliances and vanities and flooring and items like that for houses before we even started the season so we would have the materials on hand,” Davis said.

The twins expanded their circle of local talent.

“The more the show gets recognition, the more we are able to pull in other people,” Lamb said.

Local businesses getting an HGTV shine include a Lynnwood contractor, a Marysville closet company, a Snohomish ironworker and a Mukilteo painter.

Family members are part of the workforce.

Filming for the third season started in August and wraps up next week. Three houses are available to buy, two in Snohomish and one in Mukilteo. The homes are sold through their real estate business, Lamb & Co.

The 13 houses featured this season all come with a story.

One homeowner raced pigeons for 30 years.

“We call it the pigeon house,” Davis said. “He was unable to sell the house because how do you sell a house with 50 pigeons in the backyard?”

Tune in to find out.

Another show has a Marysville home owned by a Volkswagen collector. Check out the 10 VWs in the backyard.

“Cool beans!” as the sisters might say. Their signature ride is an orange VW bus named “Ginger.”

(Spoiler alert: They get another VW this season. It doesn’t come from the Marysville yard.)

In Tuesday’s season opener, the twins help their cousin and his wife sell their Monroe home. The couple bought the place before having two children, when cousin Jake was deployed with the Army in Afghanistan.

The twins were discovered five years ago in a YouTube video rocking to Taylor Swift songs while chauffeuring clients in a VW van. Their car karaoke videos caught the attention of High Noon Entertainment, producer of “Fixer Upper” and “Cake Boss.”

“Unsellable Houses” was born. A first season of half-hour shows led to two seasons of hour-long episodes. They’re now fixtures in the HGTV universe. They were contestants on the network’s renovation competition, “Rock the Block,” and later this year they will appear on “Home Town Takeover.”

The sisters grew up in Snohomish, married their high school boyfriends and are the mothers of sons. They roll as one, finishing each other’s sentences. The back-and-forth banter is part of the sister act — on the series and off the set.

The twins can often be found on First Street in Snohomish. Their real estate office is at 610 First St. Two blocks down, at 801 First Street, is the Lamb & Co. storefront, opened due to HGTV fan demand for their home goods.

Their day job is still selling homes, even without a camera crew.

Andrea Brown: abrown@heraldnet.com; 425-339-3443. Twitter @reporterbrown.