Posted by Leonard Steinberg on April 17, 2011
This week I was again shocked and amused by the power of a Reality TV show over the mind of a seller: Does a TV appearance really double the value of an apartment?
I had met with an owner several months ago after a meeting a year earlier where I had told him to hold off on selling because of the shaky financial markets. When we met, I gave him a price range within which I felt his property could sell, based on recent comparable sales, other similar apartments currently available on the market, and his building’s history. Last week I saw that he had listed the property with another agent in another firm at DOUBLE the price……of course with the promise of a TV show appearance that this broker hosts.
Only time will tell whether this TV appearance will truly add value to the property. But will it double the value? That seems like a stretch. And one has to wonder whether the world, especially educated New York real estate buyers, has become numb to the realities of markets purely for the sake of 15 minutes of “fame”. Maybe we are witnessing reality change before our own eyes, where because of a camera, we re-invent reality with ratings in mind. I met with another Seller client months ago who very seriously addressed changing brokers because another broker had offered to feature this property on a reality TV show he was was hosting. He was being dead serious: thankfully sanity prevailed and a few weeks later we had sold this apartment, without a reality tv show as the guiding force.
Do you follow the fashion suggestions of POSCHE, the boutique those horrific housewife’s of New Jersey frequent? And would you pay double for the same merchandise because of that appearance? Do you have dinner at Le Caprice just because those frightening, cosmetically disfigured New York housewife’s went there in the most recent episode….and would you offer to pay double for your meal?
Maybe I’m taking this all too seriously. And I do believe having your property featured on TV can help sell it (especially if the show airs close to shooting, which usually is not the case). Maybe its all fun. But how much fun is it when your property, often one of the largest investments in your life, becomes FUNNY?