What You Never Knew About HGTV's Page Turner
Fans of HGTV first came to know Page Turner from "Flip or Flop Nashville," in which she and ex-boyfriend DeRon Jenkins sought out run-down Nashville houses to renovate and sell at a profit. After that show ended, Turner struck out on her own in a whole new show, "Fix My Flip."
In the series, Turner, who relocated to Los Angeles, lends her expertise, which she's gained through decades of house-flipping, to struggling wannabe flippers who have encountered big problems in the midst of their own projects. "I've been a real estate expert for two decades and I've seen the costly mistakes people make," Turner revealed in an HGTV press release. "I'm going to invest my time, money and expertise to show them how to do it right so that they stop losing money." Not only does Turner come to the rescue by demonstrating how to turn around seemingly impossible renovation problems, but the solutions she shares can also help aspiring flippers avoid those pitfalls when they take on future projects. "I'm determined to help these flippers succeed," Page added. "When the home is done right, they will know what it takes to win from here on out."
Of course, there's more to Turner than just her HGTV series. Here's what else you should know about the star.
She feels at home in both L.A. and Nashville
While Page Turner initially came to television via an HGTV series shot in Nashville, that's not actually her hometown. According to the network, she was born and raised in Los Angeles, to which she recently returned and where "Fix My Flip" is shot.
Music City may have only been her adopted home but it remains near and dear to her. "Nashville, I always say, grew me as a woman," Turner told HGTV. As she pointed out, she spent some pretty formative years in the Tennessee capital, building her real estate empire while also bringing up three daughters as a single mother. "I moved there when I was 27. I left when I was 46," she explained. "That's where I raised my family and watched my girls grow into these amazing women. I give a lot of that credit to Nashville and the support and stability that it gave me as a single mom and small-business owner."
As Turner told CBN News, it wasn't until the youngest of her three daughters left for college that she realized that she could actually afford to move back to Los Angeles. "You know, once you get three children off your payroll, you realize how much money you actually make," she quipped. Plus, despite all those years in Nashville, Turner told Fox 5 Atlanta, she remains an Angeleno at heart. "I love Nashville," she declared, "but L.A. is home."
She's embraced a glass-half-full philosophy
One of the key traits that viewers of "Fix My Flip" have certainly come to recognize about Page Turner is her boundless positivity. When she encounters house-flippers who find themselves stuck while attempting to overcome seemingly unsurmountable obstacles, she comes prepared with practical solutions and a can-do attitude that inspires them to move forward on a path to success.
That, she demonstrated in an interview with HGTV, is simply who she is. While being interviewed, she was awaiting a tow truck while her vehicle sat unmovable in the parking lot of a Starbucks, one of its tires flattened. While that situation would almost certainly sour the average person's day, Turner was unfazed. "I'm sitting here in a broken down Tesla," she said cheerily. "I've got a flat ... and I'm so happy. The sun is shining. It's 76 degrees."
Turner's optimism was rewarded in July 2022, when HGTV announced plans to pick up "Fix My Flip" for a second season — after the series' first initial six-episode run attracted more than 15 million viewers. "High stakes and big risks come with the territory for house flippers and Page understands exactly how to help them succeed," said Betsy Ayala, senior vice president of programming and development with HGTV. "That's why the first season of 'Fix My Flip' resonated so strongly."
She wrote a book to 'give back to women'
Page Turner is not only a television personality and real estate mogul, but she is also an author. In 2019, she published her first book, "The G.O. Life: Seize Your Greatest Opportunity." In it, Turner shares the principles that have guided her throughout her career and advises readers how they can follow in her successful footsteps by identifying their own opportunities and then jumping on them.
"I want to give back to women, single mothers or not. Just women in general that have big dreams," Turner told HGTV of the philosophy underpinning her book. "Opportunities don't come around all the time, and when they do come around, you better grab it. That's what I would want to tell anybody who remotely looks up to me. Truly, if I can do this, you can, too!"
As she explained in an interview with Patheos, she sees her ability to inspire and teach others as both a gift and a responsibility. "I'm a big, big proponent of you got to sow the seed. And that doesn't always mean money," she shared. In fact, she was careful to point out that when she assists harried flippers on her television show, she takes a decidedly hands-on approach. "That means just showing up, you know, to get your hands dirty, and roll up your sleeves," Turner revealed.
She came to Christianity after growing up an agnostic
Fans of Page Turner who follow her on Instagram have certainly come to see that her Christian faith is an important part of who she is. "It's my daily discipline," she told Patheos, explaining how her faith influences both her personal and professional life. "I've always walked in the discipline of faith ... because faith is a discipline and the discipline of professionalism," she said.
Christianity, however, isn't something that Turner grew up with. Rather, it was something that she consciously adopted later in life. "I grew up in an agnostic household," Turner told CBN News. "My mother believed in a higher power, but not necessarily in a God, upper-case G." When Turner was a teenager, her mother sent her to an all-girls Catholic school, feeling the rowdy teenager would benefit from the discipline the school offered, which opened the door to Christianity. Her conversion, however, wasn't instantaneous. "It took me many years to find that relationship with the Lord outside of religion," she explained.
A big part of that journey has been prayer, which has become a cornerstone of Turner's life and something that she practices on a daily basis, she explained in a press release for "Fix My Flip."
She's a self-described 'serial entrepreneur'
Before making her HGTV debut in "Flip or Flop Nashville," Page Turner had been doing what she's since become famous for. In fact, an HGTV profile on Turner noted that over the course of her 20-year career in real estate, she's orchestrated more than 100 profitable flips, in addition to overseeing a team of up to 40 realtors as the owner of her own brokerage firm. She credited her parents' entrepreneurial endeavors and the six years she spent working for a former NBA great.
"My background and working for a giant like Magic Johnson who is a self-made, self-built entrepreneur, and my mother who was an entrepreneur, and my father was an entrepreneur, so I was carrying that torch anyways," she told Sheen of her entrepreneurial bent. "And to find myself in real estate it just all makes sense from that part of my journey."
As Turner explained in an interview with The List, she became a licensed realtor in 2003 and launched her first brokerage three years later. Flipping houses, she pointed out, was initially a sideline that, due to her entrepreneurial spirit, she dove into headfirst. "I am a serial entrepreneur, so I'm always looking for multiple streams of income," she said. "Flipping was another stream in real estate."
The mistake first-time homeowners make that breaks her heart
Given the hard lessons she's learned from her own home-flipping mistakes, Page Turner can easily spot errors made by rookies. One that particularly saddens her is when flippers bite off more than they can chew and then find themselves in over their heads financially. "It's such a historical high market, it breaks my heart when it seems on paper that people can purchase a home, but when they get into the real amounts of money — down payment and closing costs — they find they've priced themselves out of that monthly payment," she admitted to Realtor.
The key piece of advice she offers those hoping to follow her path is to realize that flipping houses isn't a weekend hobby but a full-time business — and it needs to be treated as such. "You need a business plan, you need a marketing plan, a budget plan," she explained to The List in a 2022 exclusive interview.
She also recommends flippers enlist the help of someone with some actual experience to help guide them through the process. "You need a team, you need a mentor if you're a first-time flipper," she added. "That's one of the first things I stress: Find somebody who's done it before." Turner advised giving that mentor a piece of the profits. This will, of course, reduce the amount a flipper will earn, but it will help ensure the project comes together as it should, earning the rookie some invaluable lessons that can be carried over to future flips.
She invests her own money in Fix My Flip
In addition to the change of venue, another key difference between Page Turner's new show, "Fix My Flip," and her previous one, "Flip or Flop Nashville," is that she's investing her own cash in projects. "Losing money on an investment is never fun, so I'm stepping up with my own money to prove that I'm in it to win it," she declared in an HGTV press release. "I'm here to step in to fix their flip and set them up for success."
As she told Realtor, there's a key reason why she's so passionate about steering rookies away from the errors she made when she first started out. "I didn't get a mentor, somebody to just help me with what I was doing," she explained. As a result, in her first flip attempt, she found herself stuck in the middle of a renovation, $20,000 over budget, and with no idea of how to get out of the hole she found herself in a house with unforeseen plumbing and electrical problems. "When I think about that house, I get mad at myself, because I was stupid to buy to begin with, and I just didn't know what I was doing," she recalled.
Page Turner does her homework before investing in a flip
Even though Page Turner is far from a novice at the house-flipping game these days, she has occasionally embarked on projects she wishes she hadn't. One of these, she told The List, was a dilapidated house that was a far bigger project than she realized. While she didn't lose money on it, she didn't earn any either, and she ultimately regrets taking it on. "When I started literally tearing down the walls, looked at the floors, I'm like, 'Wow, this house needs to be burned down.' It was a big mistake." That experience ultimately taught her a valuable lesson. "Do your research," she declared.
Projects like that one are also why she's insistent on expanding her budgets beyond where they'd typically be, with the understanding that there will always be unknown — and inevitably costly — issues that pop up. As a result, she explained to Heavy, she adds an extra 5 to 10% of padding to her budgets, with the understanding that there will always be an unforeseen element in every project.
Given what she's been through and the difficult flips she's undertaken, it's hard to believe that not all of the novices she assists on "Fix My Flip" take her recommendations to heart. "There are some twists and turns in this show," Turner told HGTV. "Because no, not everybody takes my advice! It gets dramatic. It gets deep!"
Why Page Turner stopped being 'a basic house flipper'
With more than a hundred successful flips under her belt, it's not an understatement to say that Page Turner has learned a thing or two about the process. In fact, the experience she's gained has led to something of an evolution in how she approaches each project. "I used to be a basic flipper," Turner admitted to Showbiz CheatSheet, but she came to realize she needed to change tactics. "But buyers are also savvy that they know what a basic flip looks like by now," she explained.
As a result, she now likes to bring in more color and unique design elements so the finished product isn't so cookie-cutter — without getting too wild, of course. "But when you bring a little bit more like maybe colored tile or just some patterns here and there, just to make it welcoming, that's a winner for the buyer," she explained.
While there was a time she felt a neutral beige or gray was the way to go when it came to choosing a paint color, she's since had a change of heart. "Be a little more daring," she advised in an interview with the National Association of Realtors. "Dare to be bold and a little different. ... Color can add a more customized feel, and that's what buyers are looking for," she added.
She is proud to bring Black representation to HGTV
As viewers of HGTV are likely aware, there's long been a scarcity of diversity in the home-renovation genre — Black and brown faces have been far outnumbered by white ones. That particular issue is not news to executives at HGTV. "We should be much further along when it comes to developing and showcasing BIPOC experts — in lead roles — on home-focused programs," HGTV president Jane Latman told Forbes in 2021, noting that the network has placed a new focus on developing shows built around people of color.
Page Turner's "Fix My Flip" is among the network's success stories in that regard, and Turner is thrilled to be contributing to Black representation on HGTV — and in television in general. "It's an incredible honor, you know, because what that means to me is that the powers that be that run the television waves are saying, 'Wow, yes you're a Black woman but you're an educated woman that can teach other people and help people,' and that's my life's purpose," Turner explained in an interview with Black America Web. Turner went on to say she feels a great sense of "pride and responsibility" in paving the way for more diversity on the network.
Page Turner pitched Fix My Flip to HGTV
On "Flip or Flop Nashville," Page Turner shared the spotlight with ex DeRon Jenkins. In her return to the network, however, she's front and center — and decidedly solo. Striking out on her own on TV has proven to be a successful move — so much so that HGTV ordered a second season of "Fix My Flip," slated to debut in spring 2023. "HGTV has only one Page Turner, but she is no damsel in distress in 'Fix My Flip' and that's why our female audience finds her so appealing," Betsy Ayala, HGTV's senior vice president of programming and development, said in a press release.
For Turner, the success of her first solo television effort is all the more sweet considering its origins. As she explained in an interview with the "Brown Ambition" podcast, not only is she the star of "Fix My Flip," but she's also an executive producer and the series creator, having successfully pitched her concept to the network.
According to Turner, it all went down when she received a call from HGTV after the cancellation of "Flip or Flop Nashville," informing her the network was eager to create a new show centered around her. "I said, 'Well, hey, I already wrote a show.' And they were like, 'Well, hey, pitch it,'" Turner recalled. "I was prepared for the moment."