- Television producers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato created “Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles” nearly 20 years ago.
- The show pioneered a genre of shows depicting the professional pressures and personal tensions of real estate brokers.
- Bailey and Barbato break down the appeal of the genre as star broker Ryan Serhant premieres his latest show, Owning Manhattan.
One Los Angeles real estate agent may have singlehandedly helped launch a 20-year-old reality TV show.
In 1994, producers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato came to Los Angeles from New York and were looking for a place to live. A friend recommended agent Debbie Berg, and the pair were instantly smitten. Berg was a bombastic character who drove around in a “huge gold Mercedes” and was so small she had to sit on a Yellow Pages phone book to see it from the dashboard, Bailey and Barbato told Business Insider.
“Every time I got in her car I felt like I was saving my life,” Bailey said.
Together, the three toured Los Angeles and found a four-bedroom house in the Hollywood Hills that Berg described as “Brigadoon,” the magical Scottish village featured in the 1954 film.
But through this process, an idea emerged: Real estate brokers might be just as big stars as the homes they sell.
Bailey and Barbato went on to produce “Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles,” which followed the lives of real estate agents selling luxury properties in areas like Brentwood and Beverly Hills. By season six in 2013, episodes were averaging more than one million viewers. Over the years, real estate agents such as Tracy Tutor and the Altman brothers became nationally known figures with huge followings on social media.
Bravo has launched spinoff shows in New York, Miami and San Francisco, while streaming giant Netflix has created its own versions with shows like “Selling Sunset,” “Selling the OC” and “Buying Beverly Hills.”
Now, Bailey and Barbato have another real estate show, “Awning Manhattan,” starring one of their “Million Dollar Listing New York” stars, Ryan Serhant, set to premiere on Netflix on June 28.
Serhant, 39, has used his TV career to build a large social media following — more than 2 million on Instagram — and has closed $8 billion in sales, according to his website, and started his own brokerage firm.
The duo also serve as producers on “RuPaul's Drag Race,” which has run for 16 seasons, won 29 Primetime Emmy Awards, and launched dozens of drag superstars. They told Business Insider that they believe in the star power of agents and see striking parallels between the worlds of drag and real estate.
“Brokers are like drag queens,” says Barbato, “They're self-made people who put on a show for you.”
It's no mistake, he adds, that many agents in Los Angeles and New York are former actors.
Once, when they were touring an open house at Gore Vidal's Los Angeles home, a dead rat appeared in the pool and, as they recall, the agent immediately told everyone in attendance that it was a sign of good fortune.
“He's a born entertainer,” Bailey said.
Real estate was a tough sell to TV executives at first.
Bailey and Barbato say that initially, real estate agents weren't a staple on TV.
The biggest hurdle, they said, was convincing network executives that the contracts included storylines that viewers could understand.
Closing the deal was a big hurdle. Deals often don't get done in real estate, with interested parties backing out at the last moment. Agents can lose clients for a variety of reasons, and sellers might end up staying put. The producers learned to trust the process and follow more storylines than actually aired.
“You have to be prepared to pursue a story that may not end the way you want it to,” Mr. Barbato said. For “Awning Manhattan,” Mr. Serhant and his fellow brokers filmed 20 homes for sale, but only seven of them closed, the two said.
Audiences naturally want to peek behind the curtains and see how other people live, and sometimes, they say, it's best to let a middleman work the magic and sell the fantasy of the home.
In the first episode of “Owning Manhattan,” Serhant shows off the world's most expensive home, a triple-story penthouse atop Central Park Tower, which is listed for $195 million. Standing on the highest terrace in New York City, Serhant tells another agent that a billionaire who toured the property asked a very specific question.
“If I put a ping-pong table here, would it be the tallest ping-pong table in the world?” the billionaire recalled asking, Serhant said.
Producers want to focus on business dramas
While the brokers' quirky personalities may make for some attractive drama, producers say they want to focus on the business, not the interpersonal conflict.
“We're really interested in the transactional element, rather than relying on soap,” Barbato said.
In “Owning Manhattan,” viewers will get a first-hand look at Serhant in real time as he attempts to close the sale on the world's most expensive home.
“You're not just buying luxury, you're buying scale,” he said on the show's premiere, adding that the windows are some of the largest single panes of glass in the world, and highlighting that the luxury property sits “higher than a helicopter” and within a normal flight path.
Serhant then brags about “The Buyer,” his ability to tell if a buyer is serious. Standing in the clouds, he points to another luxury building below and explains to the agent that its penthouse just sold for $22,000 per square foot — almost a bargain, he claims on the show, since penthouses in Central Park Tower go for just $14,000 per square foot.
In “Taking Manhattan,” viewers will follow Serhant as he strives to make his eponymous real estate brokerage the No. 1 in New York City, which he winks at the camera and says is already “the best real estate brokerage in the history of the universe.”
Audiences will have to wait to find out if that's true.
When in doubt, producers have learned to let the house tell the story itself.
“Within these characteristics is a map of the human mind,” Bailey said.
