THE first season of “Million Dollar Listing,” a reality series on Bravo that follows real estate agents in Hollywood and Malibu, Calif., was broadcast two years ago, and already feels like material from a time capsule. Spending much of its time on lingering shots of canyon villas and beachfront condos, the show captured a giddy period in which a cash-strapped seller could list a shabby 1960s contemporary in the Hollywood Hills for close to $1.3 million, get an offer above asking price, and still debate whether to make the deal.
The current housing market, of course, is much gloomier, especially in Los Angeles, where inventory is up by roughly 60 percent compared with two years ago and the median listing price is down 20 percent from last year. Considering how emotionally fraught the subject of residential real estate has become, most fans of “Million Dollar Listing” probably figured the show, which was off the air last year, had gone the way of the subprime loan.
But this week a second season made its debut, and the channel has bravely stuck with the name and the format instead of steering the show in a more topical direction, like “Million Dollar Foreclosure.” Still, one wonders how a series that owed its popularity in large part to the go-go real estate market, and the national housing obsession that that market created, will be affected by the mortgage crisis.
“Obviously, the market is different today,” said Andy Cohen, the senior vice president for programming and production at Bravo. “But the cost of real estate in Malibu is still ridiculous. It’s like, O.K., this house isn’t selling for $17 million, it’s been reduced to $14 million.”
The series does show signs of retooling, however. For starters, the setting has moved away from Hollywood, where the market has cooled, to traditionally recession-proof areas farther west, like Beverly Hills and Bel Air, along with Malibu. Gone are the agents at the Hollywood offices of ReMax, a scrappy group that included Ray and Dia Schuldenfrei, an older, married team with a Burns and Allen repartee.
Season 2 revolves instead around three agents: Chad Rogers, Josh Flagg and the lone holdover from Season 1, Madison Hildebrand. None of them are over 30, and all are as focused on landing the next deal as they are with themselves. Mr. Rogers spends an inordinate amount of time on his hair and is given to making statements like, “I have a gorgeous girlfriend because image is everything in real estate.”
Mr. Flagg, meanwhile, is a man-child remarkably at ease with numbers containing lots of zeros. “Put in two, three million, sell this for nine — guaranteed,” he coolly tells one client.
(Now 22, Mr. Flagg may be less comfortable in moneyed circles after he was arrested last Thursday and accused of grand theft, several months after the season’s final episode was shot. The Los Angeles Police Department would not provide more details, but according to the celebrity gossip blog TMZ, Mr. Flagg is accused of stealing high-priced art in his capacity as an estate broker. Bravo had no comment, and David M. Baum, a lawyer for Mr. Flagg, said his client denies the accusations against him.)
Beverly Hills or not, market realities are evident in the first episode. One seller, an interior designer looking to unload his renovated condo, wants to party like it’s 2005, and Mr. Rogers must persuade him to be realistic about the asking price. The seller pouts, then pulls the listing. According to Mr. Hildebrand, unrealistic sellers are common these days, as are price reductions and slow turnarounds on high-end homes, even in Malibu. “Now the average time is eight months,” he said with a sigh the other day.
But the most noticeable change to “Million Dollar Listing” seems to be a shift in focus. In Season 1, the homes were the stars, while the agents were supporting players. Now it’s the reverse. Instead of tight shots of marble bathtubs, we get a tight shot of Mr. Hildebrand’s abs as he works out on the beach and tells us that he has “recently gone through a transition where I’m not close-minded to anything, be it a man or a woman.”
Randy Barbato, the show’s executive producer, said this change predated the sharp market downturn of the last several months and any diminishment of Americans’ interest in real estate that might have resulted. He just wanted more personal drama this season, and he pointed out that every episode still includes a deal.
Still, he acknowledged, the move to the city’s wealthiest enclaves does reflect the way property lust has evolved. Back when nearly anyone could get a loan, he said, “it used to be that you could almost touch the shingles” on houses shown on programs like his. Now, the attraction is more about fantasy. “Some properties should be there to long for, and not to have,” he added. That is why, this season, “the property is bigger and more delicious,” he said.
This is true to a point. In the premiere, Mr. Flagg gets a tip that Jay Bernstein, the former manager of Farrah Fawcett and Suzanne Somers, has died, and he shrewdly scores the exclusive listing to his house, a five-bedroom, seven-bath Spanish-style mansion that makes the Hollywood bungalows from Season 1 look like shacks. But house-obsessed viewers may wish for less of the subplot involving Mr. Flagg’s dentist, Dr. Sam, who tries unsuccessfully to buy the place for $3 million, and more shots of the interior, especially after learning that Clark Gable once used the place as a love nest.
If the show’s creators were concerned that viewers may have lost some of their appetite for “real estate porn,” as Mr. Cohen calls it, they needn’t have worried. With credit markets tight as a drum and many homeowners struggling to keep their houses, fleeting images of a hilltop mansion in Beverly Hills only provoke greater longing.
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