“Million Dollar Listing”: Comps are overrated

Season 4, Episode 2: Luis takes to his diary, Fredrik tosses comps to the wind and Ryan becomes an art dealer

From left: Fredrik Eklund, Luis Ortiz and Ryan Serhant (Credit: Bravo)
From left: Fredrik Eklund, Luis Ortiz and Ryan Serhant (Credit: Bravo)

Hot off the win of having the highest-rated episode in “Million Dollar Listing New York” history with a whopping 1.6 million hate-watchers, the boys are back in town with another sure-to-be award-winning installment. Here are some highlights.

Screw the comps!: Fredrik meets with seller/socialite Cheryl and her little dog Louis (for Vuitton, duh!) in her duplex in the sky. The combined four-bedroom pad boasts the world’s biggest shower head, views for days and a “Sex and the City”-inspired closet. 

Drop-your-remote shocking, the seller thinks it is worth $50 million, but the comps suggest the value to be more in the high $20 million range. Fredrik caves and prices it at a mystifying $34.975 million.

Fredrik dons oriental garb and hosts an open house event to show off the listing, and strategically invites Chinese agents and their buyers. It’s nice to see, for once, that Luis isn’t the only one who needs subtitles. While the “Chinese don’t do debt,” they also don’t do overpriced, which is the same in any language.

Fredrik later meets with Cheryl to explain the price is too damn high, but she says she doesn’t want the unit to get stale on the market so wants to raise it to $42 million.

Dear Diary: Luis is back with Angel’s not-so-heavenly three-bedroom apartment at 92 Laight Street, which after several weeks on the market is still asking $5.1 million. Likewise Angel is still asking to be able to get out of his Tribeca rental. After Angel storms off, unhappy that no offers have come in, Luis takes to his diary to vent.

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Later, at a boxing match, Luis says, “Boxing to every Puerto Rican means hope.” He tries to convince Angel to just take the already offered lowball amount of $4.75 million. When Luis finally gets the buyer up to $4.85 million and Angel is ready to throw in the towel, Luis makes a boss move and suggests not taking it. Miraculously, in a few minutes he gets a competing offer and the final TKO is $5 million.

Tribeca: The Mullet of New York: Ryan meets with his boss Eddie, owner of Nest Seekers International, who is eager to sell his own apartment. Set in Tribeca — a place known for its business in the mornings and partying at night — this combined-unit 1,900-square-foot pad with a usable airshaft-turned-garden should be worth about $3.5 million, but Eddie wants $5 million. After settling for an asking price of $4.5 million Ryan finds out there is a catch: He must also sell Eddie’s 400-piece art collection — much of which features creepy Pagliacci-esque clowns.

When Ryan’s art appraiser informs him that the collection’s frames are worth more than the actual art, Eddie does what everyone seems to do to Ryan on the show — he gives him a pep talk. He relays that he hopes Ryan can use his social media prowess to generate interest in the collection.  Eddie is wise to all of Ryan’s tricks having worked with him for so long, so much so that Ryan says working for him is like “Karate Kid fighting Mr. Miyagi.” Ryan shows him that a picture of him walking across the street has garnered 4,747 likes, but a picture of one of the late Louis Kunsch’s paintings has only gotten two because showing is telling!

Ryan hosts a surprise “Artpartment” Open House and tells tales such as how the artist lost both arms in World War II and painted with artificial limbs, that he was the oldest living person to still have his umbilical cord attached and, lastly, that he was partially blind. (This one we believe!)

As the episode nears its close, Eddie takes a low $3.7 million offer with the caveat that Ryan still needs to be on retainer to sell the art collection. The episode fittingly closes with a bird pooping on Eddie’s suit as a show of good luck.