SNOHOMISH — It’s a “twin win” for this real estate sister act from Snohomish.
What’s up with that?
Season 2 of HGTV’s “Unsellable Houses” kicks off at 9 p.m. Tuesday with twins Lyndsay Lamb and Leslie Davis.
The second season has 13 one-hour episodes where the dynamic duo renovate stagnant homes in Snohomish County to sell over list price. The first season’s 11 half-hour episodes that debuted in February 2020 had over 27 million viewers and was HGTV GO’s most-streamed new series.
Viewers sitting in drab living rooms wanted their houses to look like the ones the sisters whipped up. They wanted the pillows and mirrors and paint colors used so magically on the show to transform a room.
So, between seasons, the twins did what they do on TV: They remodeled a historic home at 610 First Street in Snohomish. It’s a retail store with decor items and the headquarters for Lamb & Co., their real estate and design service.
You can go there and mingle with these down-home HGTV stars.
The show is hyper-local and the twins are coffee-hyper. The pair banter with boundless energy as they tool around in a retro Volkswagen bus or sling hammers.
The sisters do staging, painting, tiling and design. They get their Pacific Northwest chic clothes dirty. Jeff Lawrence, owner of J.L. Remodeling of Lynnwood, leads the construction. Homeowners are part of the show.
Filming started in August amid safety guidelines and frequent COVID-19 testing. It was a wrap in February. Sorry, all the homes are sold.
The new hour-long episodes have scenes of the sisters strolling downtown, chatting about the community where they grew up, and shopping local. Other places around the county are highlighted.
Leslie Davis (left) and her twin sister, Lyndsay Lamb, pose in the den of a house they remodeled in Snohomish, as seen on the HGTV series “Unsellable Houses.” (HGTV)
“We get to show a lot more of our life,” Davis said. “We get to introduce our kids and our puppies. Our husbands. Our staff, the store. How we do what we do and what goes on behind the scenes.”
Their four sons, ages 10 to 16, help with the remodels, with bribes of pizza and Slurpees. On the show, the teenagers learn how to drive a stick-shift 1969 VW bug, the latest addition to their VW fleet. The youngest boy designs a clubhouse.
The twins were discovered by a production company in 2017 through YouTube videos of them singing car karaoke with a GoPro and dancing with homebuying clients to Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off.”
They’re still shaking it.
The sisters, who describe themselves as mirror twins, turn 40 on April 4. Mirror twins have features that appear asymmetrically and may also have opposite personalities.
Lamb, the creative, spendy one, has brown hair, bangs and glasses. Davis, sensible and spreadsheet-minded, has blond hair parted in the middle and sometimes a sock hat.
Both married their Snohomish High sweethearts. Their husbands were roommates in college.
The plot of the show is that the sisters invest their own money into renovating the home, then split the over-the-top profit from the sale with the seller. It makes for a happy ending where everyone comes out ahead. As the sisters like to exclaim, often in unison: “Win-win, twin win!”
Homes this season sold for between $400,000 and $700,000. Sizes ranged from 900 to 3,000 square feet. Properties included an Everett bungalow, Mill Creek golf course house and Edmonds condo with a water view.
Wait, a condo in Edmonds needed help selling?
“Unsellable houses are everywhere,” Lamb said. “There are sellers who are missing the mark on what they need to do.”
A craftsman-style home is the season opener.
“It’s a great representation of the houses in Snohomish and of our town. It has a little bit of the historical vibe to it. We wanted to save that historical value in the home but still enhance the beauty of it,” Lamb said. “It sold very quickly and in the show you’ll see we did get multiple offers.”
The market is competitive with more people moving north, out of Seattle.
“COVID has played a role in lifestyle and the type of environment that people want to live in,” Davis said. “Those who lived in tighter spaces now are looking for areas where they can work from home or have a backyard.”
A third season of “Unsellable Houses” is TBD.
“Now that we’re done filming, we’re at the store a lot, which is nice because we get to visit with people,” Davis said.
Drop by to say hi or get that pillow or paint color you covet.
Andrea Brown: abrown@heraldnet.com; 425-339-3443. Twitter @reporterbrown.
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