On HGTV’s new series “Extreme Buyers Club,” Texas real estate agent Noel Collier helps house hunters with outrageous wish lists find out-of-the-box listings that have exactly what they’re looking for—even when the demand is something that can’t actually be seen.
The show, which premieres on Tuesday, sees Collier, 42, seeking out properties that possess some rather surprising features for her equally unique clients, including a couple obsessed with ghosts who have their heart set on a haunted house, a recent divorcée who needs a lot of land for her herd of pet llamas, and a woman who works as a mermaid and, naturally, wants a home with plenty of water
While the Houston-based real estate professional has yet to be challenged with an ask she couldn’t deliver, Collier reveals to Realtor.com® that she has been sent on plenty of wild goose chases to satisfy unprecedented requests.
“I would say my top craziest one had to be in East Texas,” Collier says about the one time in her 11-year real estate career when she was asked to “help someone find a home based on a feeling.”
This client gave her only one physical clue to assist in the search, so Collier says she had her work cut out for her to track down a dwelling that fulfilled such an intangible requirement.
“He has a picture that I have to find a property based on that’s by an artist that he loves, and the picture gave him a feeling. The name of the picture is ‘The Valley of Peace,’” explains Collier before admitting her initial shocked reaction to the unconventional command.
“Girl, what? I gotta help you find a house based on your feeling? So not square footage, not bedroom count, bathroom count—it was just a feeling,” she says.
On another occasion, Collier ended up showing an extreme buyer a record 47 homes before that client purchased a property that ticked all the boxes.
“All 47 homes that I showed contained everything that they asked for in their wish list: The bedroom count, the bathroom count, the acreage size, all of that, but this couple was just about a feeling. It had to feel a certain way and it took 47 [homes],” she explains.
Thankfully, by the time Collier was hired for those near-impossible searches, she had already honed her extreme house-hunting skills. She counts a cowboy with loads of livestock who asked her for assistance eight years ago as her first ever extreme buyer.
“I had to help a cowboy relocate his entire ranch and all of his farm animals to go along with it—and there were over 500 farm animals,” Collier recalls.
“It was a big project,” she adds. “It took a lot of time. It had to be very strategic because when you’re dealing with animals, certain animals can go into shock if you move them. There was a lot of moving parts to it.”
Accumulating the knowledge and experience of relocating animals served Collier well in her debut season on HGTV. She says the home she secured for Susan, the client who needed additional acres to house her llamas, is her favorite find yet.
“This entire season, and really in my real estate career, I would say Susan’s [property is what I’ve] probably been the most satisfied that I’ve ever felt because I really know that I made an impact without a shadow of a doubt,” she says.
“Susan is my girl,” adds Collier. “Her husband basically came home and said, ‘I want a divorce,’ and you know, I’m a girls’ girl through and through, and that was so satisfying to get because Susan loves her animals … and I can feel her passion and her love for her animals.”
Believing everyone deserves their dream home no matter what that dream may be, Collier and her team tend to go the extra mile by designing custom spaces inside the homes that get chosen. That means stepping into the buyer’s world to understand how they live, learning what they truly need, and never ever abandoning the mission.
“I just don’t believe in the word ‘No,’” states Collier. “‘No’ doesn’t exist to me in this context, in the world of real estate.
“It’s like, ‘No, I’m going to find it. If that is what you need to make your life complete and your world fulfilled and happy, I’m going to find it. No matter what, come hell or high water.’”
Though this line of work often gives her a run for her money, Collier’s can-do attitude and dedication to sticking it out has made her the perfect fit for the position, even before there was a reality TV role to fill.
“I am the way that I am because I have dealt with true adversity in my life,” shares Collier.
“I was a 16-year-old pregnant with my first baby,” she continues. “I lived on my own because my home life was very, very uncomfortable and toxic … and I still graduated top 10%. I earned 14 basketball scholarships that I didn’t take because I chose to have my baby.
“I’ve grown and gone through some things, and because I have, there’s not a whole lot that bothers me. I think that’s what makes me prime for being a real estate professional,” she explains. “If it’s something that you want, we’re going to make it happen. That is literally my commitment to my clients and my family. That’s who I am.”
Collier, who is the wife of a pastor, now has three children: a 25-year-old son, 16-year-old daughter, and “8-year-old baby boy.”
When considering what extreme feature she would ask for in a home if roles on “Extreme Buyers Club” were reversed, Collier points to an amenity that would support her daughter’s participation in sports—and make the logistics of being a sports mom a whole lot easier.
“I would like to have a home that has an indoor volleyball court for my daughter,” shares Collier.
“My daughter’s a huge volleyball player—it’s not even about me, right? It’s about my kids, I can’t help it—but she’s 16 and she’s 6-foot-8 and we play on a competitive team, so we travel all around the country for volleyball. That would be my extreme ask, an indoor volleyball court.”
Despite her Lone Star State home lacking an indoor volleyball court, at least for now, the current state of Collier’s 3,100-square-foot home base seems to make the “Extreme Buyers Club” host extremely happy.
“It has a very beautiful, dramatic, long hallway when you first walk in. Like, the ceilings are 15 [feet] high and so the bedrooms, the game room [are] all off of the hallway, and then the primary is tucked to the back,” she describes.
“That’s what I love, that we’re separated from the kids,” she continues. “And then the kitchen opens up to the living room. There’s a nice flow between the kitchen, the living room, and the dining room, and we love our backyard patio. We spend a lot of time out there.
“It is a single story because who is walking stairs? Not me.”
‘Extreme Buyers Club’ premieres on Tuesday at 8 p.m. on HGTV.
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