‘Crazy’ BBC TV series begins featuring wannabe estate agents with little experience
BBC says TV show featuring brokers vying for huge property sales paydays shows US broker style model can 'change lives'.
Most estate agents don’t like to be portrayed as crazy or rich but a new BBC 2 show on TV is set to ignore all that with a new series featuring a clutch of self-employed rookie ‘brokers’ operating in the tough prime market.
Crazy Rich Agents, which the Neg reported on when it began production last year, shows that working for Nest Seekers during the episodes is not for the faint hearted.
CEO Eddie Shapiro (pictured) claims some of his US agents earn $6 million a year, but the series reveals newbie agents, many with no property experience, have to work for months and sometimes years without landing a pay day.
The first episode of the show aired last night at 9pm following the group of agents summoned to one of the agency’s luxurious listed properties – a £3 million Grade II listed castle.
Unknown to them, the agency’s CEO joins them to share an opportunity of a lifetime, offering the newbie that performs the best over the summer a job at the agency’s headquarters in New York.
Mayfair listing
Broker Aly takes up the challenge and hustles to get a meeting with a multimillionaire developer, who he boldly convinces to let him list a £30 million town house in Mayfair.
Former care worker Georgie is given the task of finding a dream home for an influencer couple, but they’ve got quite a long wish list.
Through some unorthodox methods and persistence, broker Krish lands himself a multimillion-pound listing in The Bishops Avenue – also known as Billionaires’ Row.
The series will feature four episodes and was made by Hat Trick Entertainment.
Nest Seekers has been operating in the UK since 2020.
Over 30 years ago a man in a bright yellow blazer walked into my agency demanding to see the owner. Ignoring my crass ‘Hi-De-Hi cry he proceeded to tell me that the Americans were coming to take over UK Real Estate & if I didn’t sign up to their high powered new franchise I’d be out of business in 5 years.
You don’t hear much of Century21 these days this side of the pond do you?
Similar BS is what drives this latest fly on the wall documentary & its protagonists will also soon be forgotten. I don’t believe that anyone who is obscenely rich is remotely interested in doing business with naive rank amateurs, cameras or no cameras!
I think Crazy Rich Agents is missing the letter P from its acronym C R A P, maybe P stands for Perhaps. Because, and I only saw 5-minutes of the show, the programme was neither entertaining or useful, apart from to show what all in the industry know – it is the instruction that is key. The person who gets the listing, can then cascade that potential revenue down through a network of selling agents and their clients, or they maybe can use in this case a London centric agency with a century or so of contacts and knowledge, in the age of Insta, it will be interesting to see in 10 years who wins this battle. At present over 1,000 property finders/sourcers registered with HMRC, many London centric, some with t/o of £0, some in high six figures.
Wait until Ep 2 and the Linksway property. Selling agent Dan (Danny) questioning one of these agents after spending time showing her around. Answers many of the points above. Good lad Danny!
It’s funny how, if the BBC had made a show about oil tanker driver wannabes getting to drive them around without training or knowledge, there would have been a huge outcry. And yet bad agents have consequences for buyers and sellers, tenants and landlords that can be life changing when rogue operators/idiots get to call themselves agents!
AML checks on a Saudi billionaire, via their buying agent. Good luck on that one.
Wonderfully easy, isn’t it – not a hint of registering for AML, PEP’s, SAR’s, ombudsman schemes, signed contracts – or even of making sure that their statements were factually correct. Drove a coach and horses through every piece of legislation that we face in the real world…..
Its a about as real as my Instagram picrure. Thats show business…