Don’t Buy That ‘Zombie’ Home, Says Reality TV Renovator

Published: June 2, 2026

hgtv, home renovation — Photo by Roselyn Tirado on Unsplash

By India McCarty

Real estate expert and star of A&E’s upcoming ZOMBIE HOUSE FLIPPING: FAMILY BUSINESS Tommy Harr warns families about the dangers of purchasing a “nightmare home” they think they can renovate themselves.

“I mean, with the rise of maybe social media and YouTube and shows like this…everybody wants to get into flipping houses, and maybe they don’t know anything about flipping houses,” he told Fox News. “So, they may be flipping it themselves, or somebody more or less puts lipstick on a pig, and they leave somebody with a bad house.”

Harr knows what he’s talking about; he and his family specialize in renovating abandoned “zombie” homes in the Columbus area. But what is a “zombie home?”

According to the NYC Housing Preservation & Development website, a “zombie home” must fulfill four criteria: “Properties with 1-4 units, Abandoned and vacant, Physically distressed (for example: overgrown weeds, graffiti, trash all over the property, visible repairs needed), [and] In foreclosure or pre-foreclosure (the owners are behind on their mortgage payments).”

“My biggest recommendation would be [to] hire a really, really good home inspection company, like my dad, who’s been around a long time,” he shared. “And they can just save you, let’s say you could spend $500. They can save you so much time, so much money and so much headache if you just get out of your own way and hire a professional.”

On ZOMBIE HOUSE FLIPPING, Harr teams up with his dad, a property inspector; his mom, a realtor; and his siblings, an inspector and project manager in-training, respectively.

“There was an evolution to it,” Harr told TV Insider of the family team-up. “I’ve always worked with my dad. My dad is a home inspector, and he has been doing that for 25 years. He also had a property preservation business when I was growing up. The banks would hire him, as they would foreclose houses to take care of them.”

He continued, “As I hit 12 or 13 years old, I wanted to make a little bit of money and worked for my dad. I would work for him in the summers. As the oldest boy among five kids, I wanted to work with him for the rest of my life. As I graduated college, I became a full-time home inspector for him. I convinced my mom to become a realtor at the same time because I was going to flip all these houses when I’ve never done one before. She thought I was crazy. Then my two brothers after they graduated college, they joined one by one.”

New episodes of ZOMBIE HOUSE FLIPPING: FAMILY BUSINESS premiere on A&E every Saturday.

Questions or comments? Please write to us here.