The Property Brothers First Flip

How the future TV stars rehabbed a “$200,000 eyesore.”

- Jennifer Calfas

WHEN DREW AND

Jonathan Scott turned 7, their father told them each to get a job.

Not even old enough for a paper route, the twins undertook a series of oddball entrepreneurial ventures that they continued through adolescence: peddling coat hangers (25¢ each), performing as clowns, and going door-to-door to sell personal alarm devices.

But as teenagers growing up in Canada, the duo that would later star in HGTV’s Property Brothers didn’t consider real estate until they saw an infomercial touting the chance to make “millions by buying houses with no money down.” As they recount in their new memoir, It Takes Two: Our Story, they wanted to find a way to fund their dreams—for Drew, being an actor, and for Jonathan, a magician—and real estate seemed as if it could be the answer.