Christina Meursinge Haack (born July 9, 1983) is an American real estate investor and TV personality. She co-stars on HGTV’s show Flip or Flop alongside her ex-husband Tarek El Moussa and currently has her own HGTV show Christina on the Coast.
Background
Haack was born Christina Meursinge Haack in Orange County, California. She has a sister, Carly, who is ten years younger. She went to school in southern California and began working in the real estate industry after college, where she met her future husband and business partner, Tarek El Moussa.
Career
Real estate
Haack ran the real-estate agency Tarek and Christina: The El Moussa Group with her first husband Tarek in Orange County, California. In 2010, the El Moussas, along with their business partner Pete De Best, bought their first investment property in Santa Ana, California for $115,000, selling the property for a profit of $34,000. The trio continued to flip houses, expanding their real-estate investing business into Arizona and Nevada.
The El Moussa Group was dissolved in 2018. The business is now owned by Tarek and Associates, a sole venture of Tarek El Moussa.
Television
The husband-and-wife team sold real estate in the southern California area. When the housing market plummeted after the October 2008 stock market crash, their real estate business suffered. Christina and Tarek went from living in a $6,000-per-month house to a $700-per-month apartment in just a few years.
One day in 2011, on a spontaneous whim, Tarek asked a friend to help him make an audition tape for HGTV. The friend filmed an entire episode of the process of house flipping from start to finish. The audition tape of the flip was sent to a production company without anyone believing that it would be of much interest to them, but the production company, Pie Town Productions, loved it. HGTV producers had also noticed the couple’s Instagram profile, which featured before and after profiles of many of the renovation projects they had undertaken.
In 2012, HGTV signed the couple to a regular weekly program that featured the ins and outs of flipping a house, as well as a look at their family life. In a 2014 interview, Haack said, “Each episode shows things that can go wrong, and do go wrong”. In April 2013, Flip Or Flop finally hit the small screen on the network.
In June 2018, it was announced that Haack would be receiving her own spinoff show, Christina on the Coast. The first episode of season 1 focused on Haack renovating her new post-divorce home, with the remaining seven episodes focusing on her renovating other people’s homes. Filming began in fall 2018, for a spring 2019 premiere. The show’s second season premiered on January 2, 2020 on HGTV.
In 2017, Haack presented at the Daytime Emmys.
Other businesses
In March 2020, Haack released a book, The Wellness Remodel, with certified nutritionist Cara Clark.
On July 14, 2020, Haack announced she will be partnering with Spectra Furniture to create a furniture line for the brand. The new line, Christina HOME, will debut in October 2020.
Personal life
Marriage to Tarek El Moussa
Christina and Tarek were married in 2009. Their daughter Taylor was born in 2010 and their son Brayden was born in 2015.
In 2013, Tarek was diagnosed with both thyroid and testicular cancer. When doctors recommended radiation treatment, the couple decided to bank Tarek’s sperm and try in-vitro fertilization to have a second child. The first attempt failed and Christina suffered a miscarriage on the second try. She became pregnant with their son in 2015.
After having her second baby, Christina was back to work on Flip or Flop within four weeks. She began to feel overwhelmed and the tension between the couple escalated. “We weren’t able to properly communicate anymore,” she said. “It got to the point where we weren’t even driving to set together.”
In May 2016, the couple separated after an incident at their Southern California home. Tarek was found by the police, and maintained that he was never suicidal and had simply gone for a hike, taking a gun to protect himself from wild animals.
Following the incident, Christina stated that “being separated was healthier for both of us”. Tarek and Christina filed for divorce in 2017 and the divorce was finalized in January 2018. They continue to co-parent their children.
Marriage to Ant Anstead
In November 2017 she began dating English television presenter Ant Anstead. On December 22, 2018, she married Anstead at their Newport Beach, California home and officially changed her name to Christina Anstead, dropping the last name of her first ex-husband. The couple’s only child together, Hudson London Anstead, was born on September 6, 2019. They announced their separation on September 18, 2020, and she filed for divorce in November. She also reverted to her maiden name of Christina Haack, dropping the last name of her prospective ex-husband.