Maybe days after various media congloms announced plans to lay off thousands of journalists isn’t the best time to unveil at TCA a new reality TV series about 1%ers having trouble selling multi-million dollar homes.
CNBC bravely did so anyway, on Day 1 of Winter TCA 2019.
“Sometimes we go into homes [that owners] think are worth $20M and it’s worth $14M and their taste level is not that good and no matter what they do they’re in a losing situation. We do our best to mitigate those losses,” Aaron Kirman, star of CNBC’s new Listing Impossible told the Pasadena hotel ballroom filled mostly with overworked, underpaid TV critics/bloggers/reporters.
Listing Impossible focuses on multi-million-dollar piles that are languishing on the market.
The days of everyone winning in real estate are over, Kirman told the crowd, explaining he tries to help multi millionaires “get through it.”
When one critic in the room asked, why, in this age of economic despair, “we should care” about someone who is going to have to settle for $14M on a house they thought would sell for $20M, Kirman responded it was a “great question” but Listing Impossible is “not just about the uber-wealthy.” The program will even feature homes selling for as little as $1M.
“And, in LA, that’s a shoebox,” added Kirman’s former intern turned agent Neyshia Go, who said she studied music at UCLA but decided instead to pursue her childhood dream to become “that bitch in a boardroom making deals happen.”
Rich people face real estate problems just like everyone else, Kirman insisted. Just “the numbers may be different.”
“A lot of us can’t even afford the houses we are selling,” confided agent Arvin Haddad, who also is part of Kirman’s team. Haddad spoke briefly about a summer he sold homes totaling $12M.
“Not all of us are rich. Lots of us are just making it,” he explained, noting that the summer of $12M, his pregnant wife had just quit her job, and he was in the red to the tune of $17K a month with only about $1K in his bank account.
Kirman has a saying: “There is a shoe for every dirty foot.” But it can be tough to find that right dirty foot willing to buy the shoe when your pool is just 1%.
Listings Impossible is one of CNBC’s three new original series focused on real estate that will join its primetime lineup in May.
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