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They Lost Their Homes. Now A Reality TV Star Is Selling Them.
H. L. Mencken said it many years ago: No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
Retweeted by Dave Weigel: https://twitter.com/daveweigel
Behind the scenes of Million Dollar Listing New York are black and Latino families who lost their homes in the wake of the subprime mortgage crisis.https://www.buzzfeed.com/lisariordanseville/they-lost-their-homes-now-a-reality-tv-star-is-selling-them
Link to tweet
They Lost Their Homes. Now A Reality TV Star Is Selling Them.
Behind the scenes of Million Dollar Listing New York are black and Latino families who lost their homes in the wake of the subprime mortgage crisis.
Lisa Riordan Seville
BuzzFeed Contributor
Lukas Vrbka
BuzzFeed Contributor
posted on Dec. 20, 2017, at 3:59 p.m.
Ryan Serhant, New York City’s self-described “#1 Broker,” is on a roll. Since we left him at the end of last year’s season, the star of the hit reality TV show Million Dollar Listing New York got married on a Greek island. .... In the latest season of Million Dollar Listing this summer, Serhant’s ardent fans saw him stamp that brand on Bed-Stuy. Its May premiere showed him in the back of a car, newly bearded and sporting a leather bomber jacket. Next to him was Brett Wexler, a lawyer representing a group of investors with 100 properties in Bed-Stuy and nearby Bushwick, two historically low-income black and Latino neighborhoods fast becoming part of the country’s hottest property markets.
They drive down brownstone-lined blocks, where Wexler gives Serhant the lay of the land. “We purchased all these homes from previous owners during the recession period,” he tells Serhant. Now they want them sold. “We’re hoping you’re the guy to do it.”
Wexler drags a quickly bored Serhant on a “six-hour listing marathon.” Serhant’s head lolls as the camera cuts to one renovated house after the next. But he can do the math. “What’s 3% of $200 million?” On the bottom of the screen pops his potential commission: $6 million. For that, he says, “I will sit in a car all fucking day. And I’ve done a lot worse things for listings before.” Ryan Serhant was in.
What Million Dollar Listing’s viewers did not learn, and what Serhant told BuzzFeed News he did not know, is that before the fresh paint and white Carrara marble, these houses were teetering on the edge of foreclosure. ... Their transformation into reality TV dream homes played into a growing crisis in affordable housing, with vulnerable New Yorkers losing their grip on homeownership just as the value of their homes is skyrocketing.
Behind the scenes of Million Dollar Listing New York are black and Latino families who lost their homes in the wake of the subprime mortgage crisis.
Lisa Riordan Seville
BuzzFeed Contributor
Lukas Vrbka
BuzzFeed Contributor
posted on Dec. 20, 2017, at 3:59 p.m.
Ryan Serhant, New York City’s self-described “#1 Broker,” is on a roll. Since we left him at the end of last year’s season, the star of the hit reality TV show Million Dollar Listing New York got married on a Greek island. .... In the latest season of Million Dollar Listing this summer, Serhant’s ardent fans saw him stamp that brand on Bed-Stuy. Its May premiere showed him in the back of a car, newly bearded and sporting a leather bomber jacket. Next to him was Brett Wexler, a lawyer representing a group of investors with 100 properties in Bed-Stuy and nearby Bushwick, two historically low-income black and Latino neighborhoods fast becoming part of the country’s hottest property markets.
They drive down brownstone-lined blocks, where Wexler gives Serhant the lay of the land. “We purchased all these homes from previous owners during the recession period,” he tells Serhant. Now they want them sold. “We’re hoping you’re the guy to do it.”
Wexler drags a quickly bored Serhant on a “six-hour listing marathon.” Serhant’s head lolls as the camera cuts to one renovated house after the next. But he can do the math. “What’s 3% of $200 million?” On the bottom of the screen pops his potential commission: $6 million. For that, he says, “I will sit in a car all fucking day. And I’ve done a lot worse things for listings before.” Ryan Serhant was in.
What Million Dollar Listing’s viewers did not learn, and what Serhant told BuzzFeed News he did not know, is that before the fresh paint and white Carrara marble, these houses were teetering on the edge of foreclosure. ... Their transformation into reality TV dream homes played into a growing crisis in affordable housing, with vulnerable New Yorkers losing their grip on homeownership just as the value of their homes is skyrocketing.