Thrill of the Hunt

By Lisa Arnett
June 2025 View more Home

A Naperville home-buyer shares her story on HGTV’s House Hunters

Since its 1999 debut, HGTV’s House Hunters has chronicled the adventures of homebuying hopefuls in all corners of the country. When the show’s 258th season debuted earlier this year, episode 2 featured the sights and sounds of Naperville and the story of local resident Kelli Saldana.

As for the catalyst for Saldana’s house hunt, the episode’s name, “Right House, Wrong Guy,” gets right to the point. The show opens with snapshots of her former dream home on Kathy Court in Naperville. “I purchased the home for my former fiancé and I,” she says. “I ended the engagement and I knew I had to sell the home.”

First aired in February, the episode follows a newly single Saldana on her house-hunting journey with her now-25-year-old daughter, Erica, and her eventual decision to purchase a home in Naperville’s Wil-O-Way neighborhood.

Saldana grew up in Elmhurst and has spent much of her life in the west suburbs, save for time spent living on Chicago’s Northwest Side. “Erica’s dad—who’s a retired Chicago police commander—when we were married, we had to live within city limits,” she says. “When we divorced, I moved to Oak Brook and lived there for 17 years.” Saldana previously worked in customer support for Lexus and BMW dealerships in Westmont and is now a preschool teacher in Naperville.

Saldana’s real estate agent—on the show and in real life—is her cousin’s husband, Graham McDonald, a broker with Coldwell Banker Realty. “I met Kelli in 2019 when my wife and I first started dating,” McDonald says. “I came over for Easter, and she was the life of the party. We had similar personalities—we’re both very outgoing, and I tend to not have a filter, so Kelli and I get along really well.”

McDonald and Saldana’s banter provided plenty of comic relief on the show. “Graham always says I’m too picky and too high-maintenance, and he may be right,” Saldana admits during an on-camera interview on the episode. “But my daughter and I are looking forward to a new chapter in our life and I don’t want to settle.” At one point when Saldana reiterates her preference to live walking-distance to downtown Naperville, McDonald tries to give her a reality check. “Are you really going to walk to downtown, though? She walks around in high heels!” he says on the episode. Saldana responds, “I’ll put sneakers on!”

All these months later, Saldana reports she does leave her beloved heels at home more often than McDonald was willing to wager. “We are only two blocks from the riverwalk, so [Erica and I] walk or bike downtown all the time,” she says. “Our favorite restaurants to go to are Hugo’s, Fat Rosie’s, and Blue Sushi.” The house is also just a few blocks from another one of their favorite dining destinations, Mesón Sabika.

The episode featured two other properties: a Naperville townhouse 10 minutes from downtown and a sprawling home in Oswego. “Of everybody I know that watched the episode, 95 percent of people thought she was going to pick the Naperville townhouse,” McDonald says. With its glossy wood floors and column-adorned formal dining room, the townhome seemed to jibe with Saldana’s style, but she was intent on a single-family home with a backyard for entertaining.

McDonald was glad to see the Naperville housing market highlighted on a national stage. “From a real-estate perspective, Naperville has something for everybody,” he says. “We have the condos over on Ogden that you can get into for under $200,000 and then we have entry-level homes that are $350K, $450K, $550K if you’re looking for something that’s single-family. The houses continue to grow, too, so it’s that flexibility of being able to really keep your family in Naperville for your entire life.”

Since moving in, Saldana has been able to make the house her own with a few upgrades. An island was one of the features Saldana felt was missing from the kitchen, and she hired general contractor Jose Aguirre of Elgin-based Extreme Remodeling to create a counter-height granite table that snugly fits the curve of a large bay window looking out to the backyard. “I love it, and it’s the focal point of the kitchen,” she says. His team also replaced the existing kitchen tile with wood flooring and added new cabinetry to store wine bottles and glassware. Saldana also hired a friend’s landscaping company to make some exterior upgrades. “They put in a beautiful new front porch and all new landscaping,” she says.

Throughout her house hunt, Saldana says that McDonald often reminded her of the 80/10/10 rule, a guiding philosophy that real estate agents often outline for buyers: 80 percent should meet your wants and needs, 10 percent you might not like but you can eventually change (think paint colors, fixtures, flooring), and 10 percent you may not like, but you can live with. “It’s so true because 80 percent of the home I do love,” Saldana says. “And 10 percent I was able to change, like the kitchen and landscaping.”

As far as that last 10 percent, though the home was lacking three of Saldana’s dream asks—a Colonial facade, kitchen pantry, and walk-in closet in the bedroom—she was willing to overlook those details in the end. “My house is not a Colonial, but I’m within my budget and I’m where I want to be,” she says.

Photos: Warner Bros. Discovery Inc (screenshots)