Real estate-obsessed viewers can choose from at least 24 shows

The Chicago Tribune reports:

The sagging housing market makes for good television.

Apparently it doesn't matter that annual rate of home sales nationwide are down 10.7 percent: The real estate boom is alive and well on cable TV.

The networks have crafted entertainment out of fluffing up homes for sale, chronicling the travails of amateurs trying to flip houses for profit or tagging along with realty agents as they angle for a listing.

"Even with the slowing housing market, it doesn't take away people's interest," said Frances Berwick, executive vice president of programming and production for Bravo, which has two titles in the works. "If anything, it makes people slightly more crazy about following it."

And the real estate obsessed can choose from at least two dozen shows. From "Property Ladder" to "Flip This House" (not to be confused with "Flip That House") to "National Open House," the list is long and getting longer.

The latest is "Secrets that Sell," which premiered this month. It is a spinoff of "Designed to Sell," which premiered in 2004 and became so popular that Home & Garden Television has expanded it to five nights a week and signed on production crews in Chicago and Washington to supplement its Los Angeles base.

Imagine that.