Several local Realtors are featured on a new reality TV show, “Million Dollar Listing,” which shows passionate homeowners, agents and buyers losing their patience and their minds, as they all attempt to get the most out of their listings.
By Ryan O’Quinn / Special to The Malibu Times
Most people in Middle America don’t understand the ups and downs of buying property on the California coast. Try to imagine any other place in the world that could make high drama out of selling or buying a house. Once again, we come back to the adage – only in Malibu. On Aug. 29 the cutthroat business will be exposed on the Bravo network’s new reality series “Million Dollar Listing.”
Several local Realtors will be featured in the six-episode series that looks at the high-stakes game of real estate in the high-priced neighborhoods of Malibu and Hollywood. The show will follow the inner workings of two real estate companies and will go behind the scenes to uncover the competition, work and emotion that goes into buying and selling property in today’s hottest real estate markets with multimillion dollar negotiations on the line and a cast of colorful personalities.
According to the network, viewers will be treated to passionate homeowners, agents and buyers losing their patience and their minds, as they all attempt to get the most out of their listings. Storylines range from a hysterical divorcee forced to sell her multimillion dollar home, to an agent who is trying to close a deal with a seller that is her ex-fiance.
Also on tap are episodes that feature a local agent scaling a fence in high heels and a skirt, a violinist selling a multimillion dollar property and a seller whose wife encourages him to sell his dream home that comes complete with a stripper pole.
“It’s hard to believe it’s real once you start telling the stories,” said local Realtor Carol Bird, who is featured on the show. “If you tell anyone some of the stories of the buyers and sellers, and the things that people do, they can’t even believe it.”
Each agent on the show was approached by the network about a year ago and went through an interview process. All the agents featured are in the top 1 percent of real estate agents for their respective companies.
Local agent Chris Cortazzo is the third highest grossing Coldwell Banker agent in the world, with sales of more than $100 million a year for the past five years. Cortazzo grew up on Point Dume and lived in various cities around the world, but came back home to Malibu.
“Malibu has this kind of magnet that pulls you back,” Cortazzo said. “I think Malibu’s proximity to town is a big drawing point. We are still close enough to everything, have a great school system, a natural beauty and a complete different quality of life.”
Cortazzo, who lives on two and a half acres on Point Dume with his family and a variety of rescued animals, said his first listing was an $8 million property and his first sell was $5 million.
“I’m not out for fame,” Cortazzo said of being on the show. “I’m not a celebrity. I just sell real estate. I don’t have an ego when it comes to my job. I love what I do.”
Cortazzo’s protégé is also featured on the show as “The Rookie.” Twenty-five-year-old Madison Hildebrand graduated from Pepperdine University in 2003 and decided he wanted to stay in Malibu. In his first six months in the office, Hildebrand earned more than $200,000 in commissions and has sold more than $40 million in real estate to date.
“I made a 100 percent commitment to get into real estate for five years,” Hildebrand said. “Everybody told me I was too young and it was too competitive. I decided I would give it all my attention with no second job and it took off real fast. I am knee deep in the water now and I love it.”
Hildebrand said he interviewed at several offices before Coldwell Banker in Malibu, and he thought his age was more of an issue than the office managers in Malibu did.
“Everybody was really supportive and Jay [Rubenstein] said your age is only going to be an obstacle if you make it one,” Hildebrand said. “With my clients, that question came up a lot for the first six months, but as my confidence and experience grew, the question just disappeared. Sometimes it will come up and they will [ask], ‘How much real estate have you sold?’ And I say a number, and they say, ‘How old are you?'”
All the Malibu agents we talked to agreed that in order to be successful in real estate you need to be a people person. For agents Scotty Brown and Lydia Simon, the progression was natural as they both came from a background in entertainment.
“I was working on another TV show about real estate,” Brown said. “Then the Bravo thing came along, which was a better opportunity.”
Prior to coming to California, Brown was in the music business in Chicago and moved here to pursue his career. His family is in real estate in Chicago and he says he was good at branding and promotion, and discovered he was good at real estate from the beginning.
“A lot of my friends from Chicago have seen me in the [Bravo] commercials and are calling me,” Brown said. “The thing is, I had a couple deals that were really smooth and they probably won’t show those. I just want them to show me doing a good job making the clients happy.”
Malibu agent Lydia Simon is known as the “condo queen” and said she was successful because she could sell what she knew about.
“It’s so competitive in real estate, I knew I wanted to specialize,” Simon said. “Carving out a niche was very important to me. Everything that I have achieved has been from pure hustle, drive and ambition.”
Simon was a model and actress, and did television shows, Broadway and print work before turning her attention to real estate.
“I really loved meeting new people and it was a natural progression,” Simon said. “You can’t get much better than working in Malibu. It’s one of the most exclusive places in the world and it was the ideal thing for me to be in a beautiful community meeting people from all walks of life.”
None of the agents interviewed have seen the final product of the Bravo show, and are all just hoping for the best when it comes to making them look normal.
“I don’t know if [Bravo] will make it look like a soap opera with real drama,” Bird said. “It’s definitely la-la land price-wise. The numbers just roll off our tongue and everybody goes ‘what?’ People buy houses for way less than our down payments.”
Whatever the outcome, Malibu will once again be in the spotlight.
“I think we’ll have a few good laughs,” Bird said of the finished product. “I think that Malibu will end up looking like a beautiful place. They will probably think we’re a little nuts out here and they are probably right.”
“Million Dollar Listing” airs Aug. 29 at 9 p.m. on Bravo.