‘Owning Manhattan’ ‘Buying Beverly Hills’ Real Estate TV’s Glam Factor

Unscripted real estate television series traditionally welcome viewers into seemingly unblemished homes. There’s no peeling paint, mismatched furniture or structural issues. Instead, residences get a glow up — as does the buying and selling process. Much like “The Bachelor” franchise’s heavily produced search for love staged for maximum drama, reality real estate shows feature gloss (Celebratory champagne open houses and closings! Designer interiors! Stunning architecture! Fashion-plate agents!) minus airtime for the unsexy, less visually appealing nuts-and-bolts of negotiations and financing.

Is the view unrealistic? Ryan Serhant, of Manhattan-based brokerage Serhant and Netflix’s “Owning Manhattan,” exec-produced by World of Wonder’s Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey, doesn’t think so. He says his show is “the most authentic and real portrayal of the real estate brokerage business that has ever been on television.”

He pitched Netflix and the production company to follow him and several camera-ready Serhant agents for four months as his firm approached its three-year anniversary, cinema verite-style, rather than adhere to pre-planned storylines. (Serhant is a 15-year vet of the reality TV series world, beginning with Bravo’s “Million Dollar Listing New York”).

Deals die, some properties rent instead of sell, an agent is notably fired and everything was done in real time, says Serhant of the eight-episode season. “That’s the energy that you feel in the show and why I think it feels so real,” he says.

Viewers responded heartily to the elevated genre concept. Recently renewed for Season 2, “Owning Manhattan’s” Season 1 spent one week in Netflix’s Global Top 10 TV (English) and reached the Top 10 TV programs in 30 countries. For Serhant’s brokerage, the Netflix streaming effect resulted in a 2,000% increase in website traffic while the firm’s followings on social grew by one million, he reveals. In response, he created a lead division to manage the onslaught of queries from sellers, buyers and other real estate pros.

“You are putting your brand, your name and the Agency on a global scale, and when you’re able to do that, it’s just amazing and tremendous marketing,” says Mauricio Umanksy, the Agency real estate brokerage’s founder and CEO, of his decision to star in and executive produce Netflix’s “Buying Beverly Hills.” The second season was shot during 2023’s downturn in the luxury residential real estate market. Closing deals on mega-million-dollar homes became difficult. “It did show that not everything is super easy; you have to work hard and fight for it,” says Umansky.

A fair amount of interoffice and personal drama was paired with discussions of dealmaking. Conflicts are also part of the process, Umansky notes. “I felt like from our perspective, our cast was very transparent, and the show ‘Buying Beverly Hills’ really captured us in our real elements,” he says.

While home inspections and other quotidian practicalities of closing residential sales “are just not that interesting for anybody,” Umansky says, demonstrating the high stakes and personal vulnerabilities of agents makes for much better television. Viewers also have drone-shot, unprecedented look-throughs of multi-million dollar properties otherwise out of reach.

Real estate pros take a chance when participating and exposing themselves to audience scrutiny. “The risk is that you end up putting yourself out there looking like a terrible human being,” says Umanksy, whose separation from “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star Kyle Richards was a major storyline on “Buying Beverly Hills.”

HGTV’s “Hawaii Life” is 14 seasons of truncated decision-making by buyers looking for dream homes in Hawaii. As Matt Beall, Hawai’i Life brokerage CEO and the show’s host explains, the timeline fits the show format. Brand awareness and visibility are positive byproducts for the brokerage but learning how a real estate deal really unfolds is not. Solving permit issues, encroachments issues and utility easements would not be remotely interesting television but that’s the bulk of the work, he says.

“The series leaves an enormous amount out of all the kind of deal-related stuff that goes on behind the scenes that would just be miserable television,” he says.

Show business and the real estate business successfully merge on reality real estate TV. “It’s content to community to commerce; it’s just math,” says Serhant of presenting real estate in the form of edutainment for a global audience.