What HGTV Fans Don't Know About Inside Out's Carmine Sabatella

Carmine Sabatella was not on HGTV's roster of hosts for very long, but the gregarious real estate and home design guru certainly made his mark with fans. His main gig was co-host of "Inside Out," where he tackled interior renovations for the featured homes while his co-star and friend Mike Pyle transformed the exteriors. The show began in 2021 and, while its cancellation was technically never announced, it has not aired since its second season finished its run in July 2023. Plenty of people are hoping for a (very delayed) Season 3 — since "Inside Out" was unique and its host had good chemistry — but HGTV's large cuts to its offerings in summer 2025 don't bode well for any series we have not heard about in a while.

Still, that does not mean we can't gush over Sabatella and marvel at his super interesting life. He spent decades in the service industry before becoming a realtor, which is when he finally embraced the idea that his lifelong love of design and landscaping could potentially be a full-time gig. Sabatella now owns multiple home-focused businesses, including a real estate firm he runs with his husband Ryan Delair. The HGTV host has taken a similarly unconventional path in his personal life, which makes his story all the more compelling. Here are some things that HGTV fans may not know about "Inside Out" star Carmine Sabatella.

Carmine Sabatella runs multiple businesses as of this publication, and while his college degree has certainly come in handy as he has navigated those waters, he never thought he would be using it in the ways he has. The accomplished realtor attended the University of Southern California, where he was a double major in business and public relations and had an intention of joining his family in the restaurant industry after graduation. "At the time, I thought you needed a business degree to succeed; although design was my infatuation, I never thought it would be a career for me," Sabatella said in an interview with Instinct in 2021.

Sabatella did not have to go far to get his Bachelor of Business Administration degree at USC, since he grew up in the Los Angeles area. His parents, Ralph Sabatella and Vera Sabatella, were in the restaurant business and the HGTV host has remained close to his mother (his dad died in 2009). Vera reportedly lives in Pasadena, the same city where Sabotella lives with his husband (and daughter, when she is not at college in San Diego during the school year). Vera is a staple on Sabatella's Instagram account, where she can be seen joining her son and his family for everything from dinners to formal events.

Given how accomplished he has become in real estate and home renovation, it is easy to assume that Carmine Sabatella started on that path early. In reality, his design interests long took a backseat to his career in the service industry. Specifically, Sabatella worked in the restaurant business — a world he knew well from a young age thanks to his family's involvement in it. "I grew up in a very Catholic Italian family. We were generations in the restaurant business. After I graduated college, it was organic for me to ease my way into the restaurant business, which I did," he explained to Out in Jersey. "I always enjoyed engaging with people on the customer service and sales levels; however, it never fed my soul."

Though he was not fully fulfilled, Sabatella excelled as a restauranteur. He opened an Italian restaurant with his family just after graduating from college, followed by a cocktail lounge five years later (both in Pasadena). All told, Sabatella spent two decades working in restaurants, but the last few years were especially tough. "I got to a point when the restaurant business sucked the life out of me. I was working 60-plus hours a week and I was miserable," he told Metrosource. "The business changed and had become much more litigious, workers comp got out of control and quite frankly I never saw my daughter and I hated that, so it was time to change." At age 38, an unsatisfied Sabatella liquidated his businesses and shifted careers.

Carmine Sabatella's love of design began early in life, and he has always indulged his creative side — even when working full-time as a restauranteur. "When I was a kid, my mother's girlfriends would come over and I would say 'Mommy that lady is really pretty, but she should have longer hair and she should be wearing 'this' color'; this was at seven or eight years old," he recalled to Instinct. "Design has always been in my wheelhouse. My ex-boyfriend was a professional photographer and I spent maybe five years doing his wardrobe for his photo shoots. I have always been involved in design to some level."

In his 20s, Sabatella bought books and self-educated on horticulture and landscaping. He redesigned his own restaurant — for fun, not out of necessity — and started taking side gigs, consulting on interior design or landscaping when friends and family needed help. "I never felt the restaurant business was my calling. Thus, I started doing small interior and landscape design jobs for friends and clients through word of mouth. It was during this time I began to fall in love with real estate," he explained to Out in Jersey. "I was 37 years old when I read a story about Lucille Ball, who I always admired...I was amazed how she changed her life at 37 years old by creating the I Love Lucy show." From Ball's example, Sabatella realized that it was time to change his own life.

After turning 38, Carmine Sabatella sold both of his restaurants as well as his home of 15 years, but even then, he struggled to stay afloat financially. After leaving the restaurant business, Sabatella's first move was to study real estate and get his realtor license. It took about a year for him to fully transition into real estate, during which time he worked as a personal shopper at Nordstrom to cover his bills.

After getting his license, Sabatella left Nordstrom for a part-time job as a designer for a staging company. He also started a mentorship at a Beverly Hills real estate firm, but neither gig brought in big bucks. "The first year was really challenging because I was doing leases, not making much money, I went through all my savings, and up until this time, I never borrowed money from anyone in my life," Sabatella told Out in Jersey. "During this time, I had to borrow $50,000 from a dear friend because I had a nest egg for my daughter, which I refused to touch."

Things turned around for the realtor when he shifted to the Pasadena market the following year. In only his second year as a realtor, Sabatella found himself in the top 10 for sales at the Pasadena Sotheby's office. He eventually left Sotheby's for Berkshire Hathaway, then transitioned to Compass and most recently as of this writing, The Agency

In his first few years working as a realtor, Carmine Sabatella found himself doing a lot of "extra" work for his commission. This included many flip situations, wherein Sabatella would help clients design, renovate, and stage their recently purchased home so he could have the listing when they put it back on the market. All of these experiences led Sabatella to create his own design and renovation company, CSDomains, which he established in 2015. "I call it a property rehab company. I am the owner and president of the company and I run the show in its entirety," Sabatella said in an interview with Voyage LA. "I work on vintage homes that were built in the late 1800's up to 1955. I don't typically like to work on anything later than mid-century."

As of this publication, Sabatella flips between 12 and 15 homes every year, with a focus on restoration wherever possible, while at the same time instilling modern functionality into the vintage homes he tackles. "I take a home and breathe life back into it," he said in that same interview. "What sets me aside from the average flipper is that I treat every project differently and I put all of myself into each home that I renovate. Passion, love, detail and integrity go into each project and it shows."

In addition to CSDesigns, Carmine Sabatella owns and operates the Sabatella Delair Group, alongside his husband, Ryan Delair. The real estate company focuses on properties in Pasadena and surrounding areas, such as Laguna Beach, Palm Desert, and Altadena. In late 2023, Sabatella announced a new affiliation with The Agency, Mauricio Umansky's luxury brokerage, and a departure from Compass, which he no longer felt was a fit.

"Compass is growing rapidly. I don't want to be one of a few hundred agents in the Pasadena area, for example. I want to have a platform where I'm maybe one of 100 agents in an office," Sabatella told The Real Deal at the time. "I love the cachet The Agency carries. It feels more boutique. They are a very successful company, but it feels grassroots."

As he shared on Instagram, Sabatella was ranked within the top 1.5% of realtors in the nation as of June 2024. This is on top of his design and flipping work, which certainly occupy much of Sabatella's time. Still, the type-A home guru somehow found time to start a third business, a brick-and-mortar store of all things. Carmine's Design and Décor is located in South Pasadena and specializes in home goods made by local artists and brands. Though the store is small, it is jam-packed with goods — all of them personally curated by Sabatella.

Though he says he always wanted to be on HGTV, Carmine Sabatella did not approach the network with a show idea. In fact, he started his television career without any sort of go-ahead from HGTV, all in the hopes that whatever was filmed would dazzle the network bigwigs. The journey started when Sabatella was approached by a production company called House 8 Media, with an idea for a show focused on merging interior and exterior design and rehabilitation. They wanted Sabatella to film a sizzle reel, having been given his name from a mutual contact. 

"Initially, I thought it was bullsh*t, and someone was playing a prank. It ended up being legitimate," Sabatella said to Out in Jersey. "They had approached my cohost, Mike Pyle, who has a strong social media presence, and asked who he would recommend being the interior designer. Mike's business partner, Kim, went to high school with me and followed my work for years. Kim gave production my name."

According to Sabatella, he and his co-host filmed for more than three years before HGTV finally greenlit the show. The result, "Inside Out," aired for two seasons on the network beginning in 2021. The show had Sabatella and Pyle working as a renovation duo, with Sabatella focusing on the interior of a home and Pyle tackling the landscaping and exterior design elements. Fans are still holding out hope for a Season 3, someday.

For as fascinating as his career trajectory has been, Carmine Sabatella's personal journey may actually be even more interesting. Sabatella is known for being one of HGTV's openly and proudly LGBTQ+ hosts, but it took him a while to get to a place of comfort with his identity. The star did not come out until he was 30, by which time he had already married and divorced a woman and had a child with her. "I married my ex-wife in 2000. We separated circa 2004/2005, just after our daughter was born. I then went through extensive therapy to try to understand my feelings," Sabatella told Out in Jersey. He explained that trying to date other women after his divorce failed, and he made the choice to come out somewhere between 2005 and 2006. His daughter, Gianna Evangeline Sabatella, has lived with him full-time since the divorce.

Though he grew up in a conservative community, Sabatella insists that it was his own traditional values that delayed his coming out, not a fear of backlash from others. In fact, the HGTV host has received an overwhelmingly positive reception from his loved ones, despite his own struggles with acceptance. "Growing up, I suffered a lot of abuse and trauma unrelated to my family. Due to this, I always felt being gay was kind of dirty, and it evoked a very negative feeling in me," he explained. "Fortunately, when I started to come out, one by one I realized none of my family and friends gave a damn."

Carmine Sabatella may have taken a while to come out of the closet, but he never gave up on finding love. Roughly a decade after splitting from his wife, the HGTV star met his ideal life partner, now-husband Ryan Delair. The pair had their first date in July 2014 — we know the exact date, since Sabatella marked it with an Instagram post for their six-year anniversary — and they are still thriving more than 11 years later as of this publication.

Two years after they first started dating, Sabatella proposed to Delair while on vacation in Hawaii's northernmost main island, Kauai. To make things even more special, the couple were vacationing with the two most important women in Sabatella's life: his daughter and mother. The pair married in September 2018, at a resort in Lake Placid, New York, in a ceremony officiated by their friend Paul Katami.

"As we get older, we are constantly evolving, and you hope and pray that as you evolve you go in the same direction as your partner instead of opposite directions. That path isn't easy by any means, and it takes a lot of work, and effort, and commitment to do so," Sabotella wrote in a 2023 Instagram post for his husband on their fifth wedding anniversary. "Thank you for being by my side and having my back through so many good and bad times. What's crazy to me is I still look at you through the same lens that I did when we first fell in love."

If there is one thing Carmine Sabatella loves more than real estate and design, it is spending time with his daughter Gianna Sabatella. Since Carmine has had full custody of Gianna since his divorce, he has been front-and-center for all of her big moments. He has also been there for the little ones and loves nothing more than spending time at home with Gianna, hubby Ryan Delair, and their many pets. "I could have the worst day possible and come home flustered and in a bad mood after losing all perspective, and my daughter Gianna, an old soul, will calm me down with the best advice," Carmine said in an HGTV interview.

Carmine spent a lot of time volunteering at Gianna's school when she was growing up, and the pair clearly have many common interests. For example, Gianna worked at a garden center the summer prior to college, no doubt armed with her dad's ample knowledge about landscaping. Carmine has also made family travel a priority, as he has for years said that one of his primary goals was for Gianna to see the world before she turned 20. His growing fame may have made that goal more difficult, but Gianna does not seem to mind. "She gets a kick out of it when people recognize me," Carmine said to Instinct. "We will go to the Americana and walk around and someone stops me and asks for a picture and she eats it up, she loves it."

Another thing Carmine Sabatella has in common with his daughter is a love for fitness, as evidenced by Instagram photos of the two showing off their muscles in the gym dating back to at least 2022. For Sabatella, exercise has always been a passion and — don't ask us where he gets the time — even a job. In addition to all of the hats he wears related to homes and real estate, Sabatella has worked as a spin class instructor for decades. "You must set boundaries and stick to them. I have grown up in fitness since I was 15 years old. I taught for Equinox for over 20 years and fitness is part of my DNA. It is what balances me and will always be a top priority," he said in his Metrosource interview.

Even back in the days when he was first opening his restaurant, Sabatella found time to teach multiple spin classes at gyms in Pasadena and West Hollywood each week. "I was the first instructor Equinox recruited when they came to the West Coast and opened in Pasadena," he proudly told Pasadena magazine in 2023. Though he now works out at another gym in the Pasadena area, Sabatella has only spoken highly of his days with Equinox. Perhaps not surprisingly, Sabatella's husband Ryan Delair is equally into fitness, and was even a Division I collegiate athlete back in the day.