A Place In The Sun star spills on dealing with 'insulting' low offers

18 October 2023 , 14:00

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A Place In The Sun star spills on dealing with 'insulting' low offers

Scarlette Douglas has revealed what really happens on Channel 4's A Place In The Sun.

The television presenter who fronted the show from 2015 made the decision to walk away in 2022 in favour of taking on more projects. Since then, she's gone on to appear on the likes of I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! as well as taking on a position on Good Morning Britain.

But before Scarlette walked away from the Channel 4 programme, she jetted across the world with Brits who hoped to find a new life abroad. Now, in an exclusive interview, the 36-year-old has revealed what really happens behind the scenes.

Scarlette Douglas has revealed what happens behind-the-scenes of This Morning (Channel 4)

Discussing some of the lowest offers that potential buyers offer, she said: "The thing with me, I love to haggle, I will always go in lower because at least then you can kind of meet in the middle. But because A Place In The Sun episodes they repeat every year, prices in example 2009 when the crash happened are not the same prices as they are now and are not the same as 2018. The exchange rate is completely different.

"What you could get back then, you can't get anymore. But because a lot of the people that come on the show still watch the old shows they expect quite a high amount of property or they'd like to go in really low.

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"We'll always have a chat before we put the offer forward, we'll ask: 'Why is it you want to go in this low?' Obviously, if the answer makes sense and it's reasonable, i.e. if the property needs a lot of work, that's fine, that makes sense, the owner will be aware of that and they're more likely to take low offers."

She added: "If they're just going in low, we try and have a conversation and explain 'Maybe you shouldn't go in this low because it's an insulting offer, so why don't we go here?' Maybe we can work on counter offers, it's tempering peoples expectations." On the show, viewers see four to five property viewings per episode but in reality, it's much more relaxed than it appears.

Scarlette left the programme in 2022 (Channel 4)

While some may believe that the buyers spend their day racing around foreign countries, Scarlette explained that each episode actually takes around a week to film. "We take five days to film," she said before continuing: "On a Monday we'll see a property, on a Tuesday we see another one and on Wednesday we'll see two properties.

"On a Thursday, we'll a fifth property and we'll also go and see a hot property. The Friday is a decision day, they have the afternoon and evening on a Thursday to think about making the decision." However, as some viewers become frustrated when potential buyers don't put offers in, Scarlette understands why this might happen.

"It's a large amount of money to be parting with after four days," she said before explaining: "Unless they've spent a lot of time in the area, they know the region well and they know what's on offer. We can show them as much as we can in four days but they won't know the place.

The presenter recently teamed up with Axa for their Future You campaign (SWNS)

"They might want a bit more time to do the research." However, she states that while it's "unfortunate" that things may not always go to plan. She said: "You just have to hope you find the right property for house hunters. The first 30 seconds of a property is the most important, that's when someone will pretty much make their mind up or not."

Scarlette has partnered with AXA on their Future You campaign and admitted that she wouldn't sign a deal if it didn't resonate with her. "My car insurance is with AXA and my brother has his house insurance with AXA. It works really well because not only am I insured with AXA anyway, the Future You campaign is very much how I think and I put things in place in the present that my future me will be grateful for what I pretty much set up so all in all it ties in really well."

TV presenter and property expert Scarlette Douglas has contributed to AXA's Future You eBook part of a campaign which looks at how our future selves will thank us for the good choices we make today and reveals the decisions people are most thankful for.

Daniel Bird