Selling New York: Show Review

Don’t say I didn’t warn you–I told you I was getting cable. And get cable I did.

Naturally, the first thing I did was set my DVR to record the HGTV shows I’d been dying to watch. Top of my list was Selling New York, a new reality show featuring two sets of high-profile real estate firms operating in Manhattan.

One property from the show.

You can watch a recent episode here.

What I like about the show–and the value I think it provides to potential buyers–is it offers an up-close, exaggerated view of real estate. The properties are bigger, prices are higher, realtors are more obnoxious, pressure is greater, and stakes are higher. Every aspect of the real estate deal is exaggerated and available for scrutiny by viewers.

While I’m sure there’s plenty going on behind the scenes that we don’t see, we do get insight into how a realtor’s mind works. In the episode above, for example, we see a realtor convince a seller to reduce his asking price by a million dollars. She tells him he needs to lower it. He resists. She finds comparable properties to show him his place is overpriced. He resists. She sends him photos. Finally, he agrees to lower his price.

You see the mechanics behind it all. She wants to sell his place so she can collect her commission. She is a good saleswoman, but you can tell she really couldn’t care less how much work he’s put into his loft. She wants to get the friggin’ thing sold. That’s her job. So she resorts to whatever she needs to do to convince him to do what she believes is necessary to get it sold.

Say what you will about realtors, one thing they know beyond a shadow of a doubt, is the current market. They know what’s been selling, and they know how much it’s been selling for. But real estate is about more than price, and it’s hard, as a layperson, to figure out how much to trust the realtors, and how much to listen to our gut. Selling New York gives us some semblance of practice. You can study a realtor’s face as she hears that her client has decided not to buy a $3 million home, after all. Goodbye, $180,000 commission! It hurts, and on the TV you can really see how much.

It’s great for us to see this, because when we’re in that seller or buyer’s shoes down the road, emotions are high and it’s hard to see the mechanics behind our realtor’s actions.

That’s my review. If you’re so inclined, I think it’s worth watching the show–it’s on Thursdays at 9/8pm Central. I tell ya, HGTV should be paying me, for all the time I spend thinking and writing about that channel. You hear me, HGTV?