The superlative in Bravo’s canon of idiotic reality shows is undoubtedly Million Dollar Listing New York, which aired its season finale last week. For me, as someone who grew up in Manhattan reared by a widower real estate broker father in the East Sixties, spent two summers in high school interning at Douglas Elliman, and took the course for a New York state salesman’s license, the show is pure candy.
And yet, a strange pang pervades when I watch it. One of guilt. How can I enjoy this show knowing full well that so many people have been marginalized?
Because foreign billionaire and government investors are anonymously buying up units in new builds as investments, John Q Public and his kin are being priced out of their own neighborhoods. This has been happening for many years now. Rome is burning and the fiddler is paying all-cash through an LLC.
Beyond Fredrik Eklund’s high-kicks, Ryan Serhant’s quips, Luis Ortiz’s shimmering pompadour, and (for only one glorious season) Michael Lorber’s phosphorescent teeth, there is suffering and disarray. Not for the show’s coiffed and plucked protagonists, but of the deleterious effect the industry has had on the city.
There has been a frisson of unease around the New York real estate market in the last two years between the publication of Stash Pad, Andrew Rice’s investigative report in New York magazine and Towers of Secrecy, the New York Times’s five-parter about the Time Warner Center, both focused on the current luxury apartment boom and the anonymous buyers, shelter corporations and offshore entities bolstering it. In 2014, there was a 30% increase in the average price of Manhattan apartments.
When I was growing up in the 90s, my father used to talk my ear off about the penthouse at the Pierre hotel. It’s a 12,000 square-foot triplex, a kind of Beauty and the Beast castle, but as an apartment, with four terraces, a private elevator and a ballroom. It was not an easy property to move because of its $30m price-tag, unheard of at the time. In 1999, financier Martin Zweig set a record when he bought it for $21.5m. Chump-change by today’s standards, but an aberration back then. In 2013, it was back on the market at $125m, though, it has since been reduced to $57m.
Real estate brokers have a fiduciary responsibility to their clients, ie it is incumbent upon them to make the best deal possible – whether selling or buying. This is paramount. It’s a mantra repeated frequently on the show and it gives the “listing” a verisimilitude, a feeling that we’re watching professionals at work. What’s a reality show without the realness? It’s typically invoked in scenes involving tense negotiations at whichever upscale bistro allowed Bravo to film in that week.
But what of their responsibility to the citizens of New York? The inflated prices, which seem to be drawn from thin air, send ripples throughout the market, stymying the average buyer’s ability to buy or keep up with the rent hikes. This is my thought when each episode ends. Those New Yorkers with real names and identities who want simply to own property, to make it a home. Watching Listing, it’s easy to lose all hope.
Then lightning struck in January with the announcement that the treasury department would regulate all-cash property sales exceeding $3m with Geographic Targeting Orders (GTO). Buyers could not hide their identities behind a limited liability corporation. (The GTO expires next month.)
Is it too good to be true? It’s hard to tell, but last week the priciest apartment sale was a three-bedroom on the 38th floor of 15 Central Park West for $28m (23% more than the Pierre penthouse sold for in 1999) bought by an LLC called Morningside Heights CPW from BZG Industries (No 5) Ltd of the Cayman Islands.
Our heroes Eklund, Serhant and Ortiz are more in the business of bold statements than straight sales, as evidenced on TV and in real life. Breaking records, throwing Gatsby-esque parties and building clip-books is how it’s done. All vying for the dubious title of best broker in New York while trying to dull the noise of their own personal lives. Will Ryan finally settle down with Emilia or will he drive her away? Will Fredrik and Derek finally get pregnant? And will Luis lay off the Aquanet? Despite what the show represents, when you’re in bed watching, these are the only questions that matter.
