The Time HGTV's Nicole Curtis Was Sued For Breaching A Renovation Contract

It's not always been a bed of roses for Nicole Curtis, host of HGTV's "Rehab Addict." In fact, she's run into a few public problems during her career, including being sued in 2017 by the city of Minneapolis for breach of contract.

In 2012, Curtis purchased a home at 1522 Hillside in Minneapolis for $2, saving the property days before it was to be demolished by the city. She agreed to renovate the home — which had sat vacant for 20 years — by a mutually agreed upon date of November 2014. Demolishing would have cost city taxpayers $20,000, so it seemed like a win-win.

But when renovations weren't completed by the 2014 deadline, the city of Minneapolis filed a lawsuit in January 2017 (per CBS News), citing a breach of agreement, and also claimed Curtis and her Detroit Renovations company hadn't paid taxes or maintained insurance on the property the entire time of her ownership.

The breach-of-contract story, according to Nicole Curtis, is a lot more complicated than the city of Minneapolis made it out to be in its lawsuit. In a 2017 interview with Country Living, Curtis explained that even though the agreed-upon purchase date of the Hillside home was July 26, 2012, the city didn't finalize the paperwork until November 2013, delaying the start of renovations.

The project at 1522 Hillside was started in early 2014, but when Curtis' contractor left, and no other was immediately available, the project got put on hold. Curtis then scrambled to bring in her Detroit team, but by the time they had arrived, her building permit with the city had expired. And the city of Minneapolis refused to issue a new permit without a $200,000 deposit, something Curtis says was "[u]nheard of."

She also refuted the claim that her company hadn't been paying taxes and insurance, noting, "Insuring a vacant property, especially in an area like that, is very expensive. We have to pay for fencing to go up, security systems, everything."

According to CBS News, it wasn't until April 2017 that Nicole Curtis and the city council of Minneapolis reached an agreement on moving forward with the 1522 Hillside project. Per the settlement for breach of contract, Curtis and her Detroit Renovations team committed to spending at least $150,000 in building materials, instead of the $200,000 the city first demanded. Further, the new completion date was revised to October 15, 2017. If Curtis' Detroit Renovations failed to meet the new deadline, they would need to turn the deed to the home over to the city.

Curtis and her team did finally complete the renovation of the Hillside home in 2018, after some additional delays — six years after the "Rehab Addict" host first purchased the house. In December 2018, she put the home on the market, holding an open house fundraiser for Backpack Project MN, a local nonprofit that provides backpacks and other items to youth in need. The last-estimated value of the home fell in the range of $430,000 to $445,000, as of April 2022.