Interview: Property Brothers Drew & Jonathan Scott On Women, Dating & The New Season

Are the Property Brothers single? What kind of women do they find attractive? These are just some of the questions Real Style readers wanted answered by identical twins Drew and Jonathan Scott, stars of the W Network’s Property Brothers (Tuesdays at 8pm E/P) and the upcoming series Buying & Selling. We got the chance to speak to Drew and Jonathan again recently, and we unleashed all of our readers’ questions on them, and the brothers agreed to answer them all! Let’s start off with what everyone is dying to know…

You’re currently filming in Toronto! How long can we expect to see you around the city?
We’re here for 7 months. We’re doing 19 more episodes – that’s season 3 finishing up. Right now it’s all new episodes on W Network.

For this interview, our readers love you guys, so they sent in all the questions. So… are you both single?
Jonathan: I am single, however, I’m quite comfortable with that. I’m just focusing on work and taking some time on my own.
Drew: I’m actually dating. It’s great for me, because we work all over the place, and my girlfriend travels around with us.
Jonathan: She also cooks meals for me too, so I get the benefits of Drew’s girlfriend because she makes delicious meals for me.

What kind of women are you both attracted to?
Jonathan: The most important thing is that they have to have a sense of humour. I like to have intelligent conversation.
Drew: For me, the same – sense of humour, a fun-loving personality and a no BS type of person. Jonathan and I amongst ourselves, and even with our friends, have a no BS policy. If something’s wrong, you get it out, move on and deal with it. That’s the same for me with a woman. I like to have real communication.
Jonathan: And spontaneity. I like someone who can be spontaneous and do something fun.
Drew: And healthy living is important to me. I’m a health nut – Jonathan and I both are. Someone who likes to partake in sports like I do and healthy eating, cooking – that’s important.

Drew, do you still follow a gluten-free diet and why?
Drew: A lot of people think that I’m allergic to gluten, but I’m actually not. It’s just that I have sensitivities. I took 4 years of kinesiology. I studied the body, I took nutrition courses. In college it was great because I took a massage course, and then all the women in my field wanted me to practice on them, so it was great. For a young, single guy, it was amazing. But on the nutrition side, a lot of people don’t realize that they have sensitivities. I find that my body functions better and it breaks down food better if I don’t do gluten.
Jonathan: He actually had the test done, and that’s how he discovered it. He didn’t know he had a sensitivity to gluten until the results came back.

What do you do for exercise?
Drew: I do resistance training. I hit the gym 4-5 times a week. I play a lot of sports. Jonathan and I play basketball, volleyball. I rock climb. We love trying new things too. In the last few months, I’ve been trapezing 4 or 5 times because we wanted to try something new. Jonathan came too. We actually have pictures of Jonathan doing a toe-hang. He’s hanging from a bar that’s about 30-35 feet in the air upside-down from his toes with his hands to the side.
Jonathan: That’s how talented I am!

What are the biggest differences in terms of your personalities?
Jonathan: I would say that I’m probably more patient. The small stuff doesn’t get to me at all. When we go to a party, Drew goes out there and meets everybody and talks to everybody. I like to keep to myself.
Drew: I find the biggest difference is that I have a personality and Jonathan doesn’t. He’s a robot.
Jonathan: That’s the pot calling the kettle black! Drew calling me a robot! I don’t think so.
Drew: Jonathan and my other brother JD nicknamed me “The Robot.” They say I’m all business. We were actually just in London for the Olympics and in Paris and then in Scotland. We would go out all day and look at the castles and, in Paris, we were seeing all the sights and at the Olympics we were going to all the events and hanging at the Canada and US Olympic houses. At night, I would go on my computer to work at 4 or 5 in the morning.
Jonathan: On top of the Eiffel Tower! On top of the Eiffel Tower Drew takes a conference call, and he’s on the phone for half an hour!
Drew: It was very good cell reception!

Does your other brother JD travel with you?
Jonathan: We have a production company called Scott Brothers Entertainment. JD is with our company, and he’s one of the Scott brothers. He’s on the creative side. He does a lot of writing for our future projects. He’s very heavily integrated.
Drew: It’s great to have the 3 brothers in one city too.

Who is the older twin and does that play a factor in your relationship?
Jonathan: I’m older by 4 minutes.
Drew: He holds it over me every day!
Jonathan: The only way it affected us was the trauma I endured by having Drew sit on my head in the womb. When I was born, I had a squished head.
Drew: He had a butt print on his head because I was sitting on his head for 9 months!
Jonathan: We’re really close, and I don’t think me being older affects our relationship… Me being better looking does! It’s harder for Drew.
Drew: FYI, we’re identical twins.

How did this career path come about? Was one of you more interested in real estate first?
Drew: When we were kids, my Dad had done renovations to our house when we were growing up. We had a couple different houses. When we were 16, my Dad actually built a house. Jonathan actually built it with him. We were actors when we were kids. And myself, I’m a director and Jonathan’s an illusionist. We didn’t want to be starving artists coming out of high school. Even in high school, we could see our parents looking to buy property. We could see the potential in a space. We thought, coming out of high school, ‘Let’s get into this real estate thing. There’s money to be made.’ Long story short, we started investing right out of high school. It went really well. Then we came back around to the film and TV side of things and starting pitching real estate-based shows. It worked out. When we were kids, our parents would go away for the day, and we would completely rearrange all the furniture and change things in the house. Maybe that was a sign.
Jonathan: They said it was sweet and endearing, but I’m sure they probably found it annoying when all their stuff had been moved.

Is it true that the two of you purchased your first home when you were 18?
Jonathan: That’s right. The very first investment project we had was when we took over an old lease to a place right across from the University of Calgary, where we were attending school. It was one of those properties where they hadn’t raised the rent in over a decade. We went to this leased property, cleaned it all up and rented the whole thing out. We made a profit out of it of about $800 a month, and we lived rent free during our first while in university. That money that we made from not having to pay rent in university and also making a profit, we used to buy a place at 18 right across from the university. That was a property we bought for $250 down on a $200,000 home. We used the money that we had saved up to do a renovation on it, and again made a profit of about $50,000. That’s how the light bulb went on.

Can you tell us what Buying & Selling is about? And why do another show?
Jonathan: Buying & Selling is the perfect complement because it’s about people who’ve been trying to sell their homes and haven’t been able to. We go in and we do a light makeover on the property and stage it appropriately to sell and market it properly and get them into a new home. It bridges that gap for people who have to buy a new home but still have to sell another property. There’s a lot of stress there, and there’s never been a show that has shown that journey. Drew, since this focuses more on the realtor’s side, he gets a lot more camera time. You get to learn a lot more secrets about how to make your home sell.

What are key pieces of advice for someone who doesn’t have a lot of money to invest but wants to stage a home to sell?
Drew: The single biggest thing is de-cluttering. Get all the extra stuff out of there, and any bulky furniture. And if you’re looking to actually do some renovation work, paint is a great way to freshen up, flooring is a huge thing. If you’re thinking about it, you have to put yourself into the mind of the buyer. If you have some old couch that your grandpa gave you when you went to college and it’s not very appealing, if you try to stage your house with that, even if you de-clutter it, it’s not very appealing. Sometimes it’s better to get rid of all that furniture, put it in storage and rent some pieces that are more stylish. If you’re getting new furniture for your new place, buy it ahead of time and stage your old place with it so it can look more appealing.

What is one of the most outrageous bloopers that has happened on the show so far?
Jonathan: We were shooting one of our interview scenes where we were talking to the director about what was going on. We were shooting for probably about 2 minutes of non-stop conversation. The crew was giggling and laughing, and I didn’t know what was going on. We were trying to do the scene. It turns out that Drew had done the whole scene pantless. It was disturbing.
Drew: It was amazing!

What made you guys travel to Austin last season?
Drew: The network chooses where we go. They had filmed another real estate show there previously, so they had some contacts there already. They found that we had a huge fan following in Texas, and in Austin in particular. It made it a lot easier to find families and people to work with.

How do you pick the people who are on the show?
Jonathan: This is important for people to know: All the information for casting – and we are casting right now for 19 episodes in Toronto – is all on the Facebook fan page for Property Brothers. If you go there and look under “info,” it has it all. We get thousands of people applying to the show. The production company Cineflix take the first end of it. They look through the people applying to see who’s actually applicable because we work with real people and real budgets. A lot of people apply thinking that we’ll just pay for the full reno. We don’t want that. What we show you on TV, it’s real. We want to keep it that way. They weed it down and pick the people who they think are the best pick. The network then needs to approve them. That’s where we step in and get involved.
Drew: We also work with a network of realtors in whatever city we’re working in to find families that way. That’s how we’re actually able to pull the wool over their eyes with the dream home because a lot of the families we’ve had on the show have never actually seen the show. We found them through realtors . They didn’t apply; we found them.

Has anyone on the show been particularly difficult when you were just trying to help them out?
Drew: Everyone is really great. We understand that buying and selling a home – things can get really stressful, especially for those who are living in the home during renovations, which we never recommend. It can be very stressful on a relationship living through a renovation. You might see someone yelling at Jonathan or something. Jonathan is a patient man. He has more patience than I do. He understands that it’s not him they’re getting mad at, it’s the stress of the situation.

Has anyone been unhappy with the result?
Jonathan: Fortunately, we’ve never had anyone be unhappy with the final result. There may be an individual art piece or something that they don’t like. That’s no problem. I can easily swap one of those pieces. I’m a very collaborative designer. The audience doesn’t get to see everything that goes on. So much more happens when the cameras aren’t rolling. I have many sessions where we sit down and we understand exactly what we want. We have shopping days where I go and get a feel for what their style is. Most home owners don’t know what they like. They just know what they like when they see it. But to describe it beforehand, they don’t know. My job is to take them just beyond their comfort zone and give them something new that they would have never thought of on their own.

Are their trends in home renovation to be avoided in 2012?
Jonathan: The crazier or more bold you go in design, the sooner it will go out of style.
Drew: I’ve seen people do candy cane-striped wallpaper, and it’s kind of like a caricature home, like something you’d see in a Disney movie. Most people aren’t going to want that.

Jonathan, you’re an illusionist. What started your passion for that and what is your best illusion?
Jonathan: Well, I started as an apprentice clown – Drew and I both did – when we were really young. We were 8 years old, and my Dad said we had to get a job. We were thinking of different things. We saw that there was an ad, like, “Learn how to be a clown, and you’ll be hired for parades.” We thought, “That sounds awesome!” We did that. We were actually making pretty good money as kids. From there, I didn’t like doing all the makeup and all that, so eventually when I was around 13, I segwayed into doing more magic as opposed to the clowning and it built from there. I won a lot of awards for my illusions. My illusions are a full Vegas-style show where there’s music and dance and special effects and all kinds of stuff. My favourite illusions – the one that really moves the audience – is one where the girl, who the story is all about, is no longer around. I have this big portrait of her and I pull her out of the portrait. We have a moment where we’re up in this dusty old attic, and then we both vanish from on top of a grand piano and appear back in the portrait together. That’s kind of a cool illusion.

Where can people see you do that?
Jonathan: I would like to try to do a show while we’re here in Toronto. We’re here until the end of April. Hopefully, if I can get some illusions shipped up here, and if we have the time, I’d like to do a couple shows.
Drew: I just think it’s funny that he has a twin brother and he’s never used me in one of his illusions.
Jonathan: It would be too easy!

What design software do you use when you’re previewing homes?
Jonathan: It’s actually called Neezo Renders. People are always saying, “We want to get that for when we do renovations to our own home.” It’s not financially viable. It’s something that you would use for commercial projects. It’s almost like a third host on our show!

Related Link: Interview With Jonathan Scott About Season 2 Of The Property Brothers

Photo Courtesy of: W Network

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