If HGTV’s goal is to destroy the real estate profession, they’re hosting yet another show that will help them easily reach that goal. Selling New York is the newest incarnation of the real estate reality show, and like most other reality real estate shows, it has very little to do with reality. If you’re one of those that spell realty with an I, you were just completely twisted into knots by that sentence. The show follows two offices, one a mom and dad and double daughter shop, the other a trendy downtown office where the guys all wear suits without ties and have very large chins and jaws and pronounce their names in a way that defies phonics. The show, like Million Dollar Listing, is simply a way for agents to show how awesome they are based on their clothes and hair and Heidi Montag like affinity for the knife. Sorry ladies of Selling New York, the plasticized smiles kill me.
The show, for all of it’s annoyances, isn’t actually that bad. The family office is one that I relate to, although I can’t say that I’ve ever read a divorce notice in the newspaper and viewed it as a sales lead. In one episode, the mother-daughter combo head out to Connecticut to preview vacation homes for one of their best clients. This practice might be acceptable in New York, but in Chicago it seems downright ludicrous. If you don’t have time to even visit vacation homes, how on earth do you expect to find the time to actually vacation there? Questions like this reflect too much Midwestern sensibility, and good sense is not a prerequisite for Selling New York.
The mother-daughter preview thing really bugged me, but not simply because it offended my real estate intellect. It upset me because Connecticut upset me. Daniel Gross lives there, so that’s reason enough for me to dislike the place. But what I really disliked was everything. The house prices upset me. The land upset me. Do I really want to spend $7MM to buy some country estate designed by some famous architect? Does the listing agent, for all of her East coast refinement not understand that when you have to verbally qualify the architect you are about to name as “famous”, the architect must not be really famous? Ever heard someone describe Frank Lloyd Wright as the famous Frank Lloyd Wright? No you haven’t. Why not? Because he really is famous.
This country estate designed by some unknown famous architect appeared pleasing enough. Swimming pool, tennis courts, and a pond. Seriously Connecticut? You and your misplaced C can only give me a pond for $7MM? The whole thing seemed ridiculous. I thought about these silly New Yorkers, too busy to even drive to the country to look at real estate, and felt sorry for them. A country retreat that is simply in the country is fine, but for $7MM I really do expect a little something else. If only those New Yorkers were actually Chicagoans, and they could find a lake so clear and magnificent located just 90 miles from their city center. I thought about this imaginary young couple from New York, and then imagined that they lived in Chicago.
If they lived in Chicago, how fortunate they would be. Instead of sending their frozen faced agents to the country to look at real estate for them, they could pile into their Range Rover and drive a mere hour and a half to a lake unlike anything they’ve ever seen in the barren landscape of Connecticut. Upon their arrival at Lake Geneva, they wouldn’t find merely hills and trees, they’d find hills and trees that lead to the water, and whether they wanted to spent $2MM or $8MM, Lake Geneva would provide them with an option. If they wanted low maintenance opulence, they could opt for the amenity packed South Shore Club. If privacy what what they desired, I could show them a 5 acre estate with huge amounts of private lake frontage, and inspiring lake views. I could find them the tennis court and swimming pool they desire, but instead of a crummy little pond, I could put them right on top of a 5200 acre oasis of purity that would make the hair on the back of Daniel Gross’s trampoline loving neck stand on end.
In the end, this imaginary couple exchanged some imaginary emails with the family firm, and decided to buy a place in the city with a large terrace. Wow. A large outdoor terrace in New York City overlooking building after building?! I can barely contain my enthusiasm. Truth is, this couple wasn’t the sort of couple who understood vacation homes at all. For all of their New York smarts, they couldn’t even grasp the most elementary real estate concept. The most simple of vacation homes cannot be replaced by a large terrace in the city. A small cottage by the water shares no similarity with a rooftop deck. A view of a tangled, dirty mess of concrete and steel can’t hold a candle to a view of a blue water and white sails.
In the end, I give Selling New York 3 stars. It’s worth watching, but only because it’ll make you want a Lake Geneva vacation home even more. It’ll also make me look even more severely under dressed, but to be fair, my face is also puffy like the faces of the agents on the show, but I owe my puffiness to cream and butter, not injections. To my New York friends who may be reading, please move to Chicago and then come see me. If you have a couple million dollars to spend, I think you’ll like our pond much more than the Connecticut ponds you’re used to.