“In a world of nothing, of barren hills and cracked Earth and once proud ocean straining through sand, there will still be a monument to our existence, bleached by the sun, perhaps, and blunted by time, but everlasting,” the announcer said to the Real Estate Development Award honorees wearing tuxes and gowns, waiting to be recognized for their contributions to towers that usually glorify their developers, not their sales broker or bankruptcy attorney..
The event, which bills itself as the “most prestigious and credible honors in real estate” is the industry’s weirdest, most over-the-top awards ceremony. Here, “elite professionals, firms and visionaries” gather for honors like Elevator Contractor of the Year and Customer Service Excellence Award for Fire Alarm/Life Safety.
The RED Awards’ founder, Selman Yalcin, has planned 15 ceremonies in five years. The Instagram-worthy evenings take place in South Florida, Chicago, Texas, California and — new for 2026 — Bucharest, Romania. Some RED galas are for the residential side of the industry, and others for global players.
New York’s, in late April, was devoted to commercial real estate, or “folks who are either directly or tangentially involved in building new buildings,” as master of ceremonies and long-time commercial broker Bob Knakal put it.
I went to the RED Awards to make sense of an online phenomenon. Several times each year, my X and LinkedIn feeds would be flooded first with red, low-budget ads and then with self-adulatory posts from winners in categories so off-kilter I figured people must be paying for them. How many applicants could there be for best expediter?
The program began at the red carpet inside Club 101 at 101 Park Avenue.
Glamorous women in sparkly dresses interviewed attendees before a dozen cameramen played paparazzi by the step-and-repeat.
After cocktail hour, Knakal took the stage.
He doled out awards for more than an hour, as the audience clapped for: The Emerging Mortgage Loan Officer of the Year, Expeditor of the Year, Tax Exemptions and Zoning Professional of the Year, and Transferable Development Rights Broker of the Year.
“Every challenge is actually a gift from God,” Dr. Ahsan Sattar of Emaret Capital Group, winner of the Multifamily Investor of the Year, said as he received his mounted plaque.
Sattar and other honorees gave their speeches in front of 200 guests, hustlers and hopefuls connected to the awardees or event, including husbands, wives, kids, parents, girlfriends, co-workers, Knakal and announcer George Shea, the real estate PR maven and longtime host of Nathan’s Fourth of July Hot Dog Contest. Yalcin shot it all on his iPhone.
Throwing events is an industry of its own, and real estate has plenty of official (Real Estate Board of New York’s), less-official (#ReTwit’s) and philanthropic gatherings with speeches and prizes. Even among these, the RED Awards are easy to make fun of: the award categories as obscure as the nominees, the promotions that appear made in Windows 95 (or by AI) and the hosts’ crimson tuxedos. But the gala isn’t a fake.
“It’s something very, very serious,” said Leo Jacobs, 2025’s Bankruptcy Attorney of the Year and brother to this year’s Contractor of the Year. “I don’t think anyone who is worth their salt would say, you know what, I’m going to dress up like this because I’m not going to take it seriously. It’s a lot of effort and work to dress up and to look like that. It’s not a come-as-you-are. It notes the seriousness of the event.”
The architect of recognition
Yalcin has no partners. He oversees the events and the judging process and even runs the social media accounts.
Yalcin does not hail from a real estate dynasty. He was born in Turkey and started in the construction business before he branched into networking events, hosting rooftop get-togethers and private dinners. He estimates about 40,000 people have attended his functions over the last decade.
About six years ago, Yalcin discovered award shows were the ultimate schmooze-fest. He says he’s perfected the formula.
There must be at least 25 awards, but no more than 30. Lifetime achievement honorees — someone like Francis Greenburger — help attract industry heavyweights. Project-based awards perform well. So do “people’s choice” categories like Most Influential Person of the Year. The black-tie dress code spells elegance.
The RED Awards are no longer confined to U.S. ballrooms. This month, developers like Sam Charney and two dozen other nominees will fly to Bucharest to receive awards in front of Romanian bigwigs and investors from the Republic of Moldova at the National Museum of Art of Romania.
Next, Yalcin says, he’s looking at the United Arab Emirates, Portugal or maybe Africa for ceremonies. Businessmen and women around the globe are all seeking recognition, he said.
“It helps their business, it helps their brand,” he said. “In a way, it’s like winning an Academy Award.”
Yalcin stresses the awards are legitimate. They are not a pay-for-play endeavor, and he doesn’t collect a fee on the applications. Individual tickets to the event cost $895 and a table for ten is $8,700. Most of the money is made from awardees or companies buying tables.
He has a 20-person advisory board filled with industry big shots like Kent Swig and Knakal.
“It’s all based on merit,” Yalcin said.
Swig is the scion of a real estate dynasty and was once one of Downtown Manhattan’s largest office landlords. Then came the great financial crisis. Swig lost a chunk of his portfolio to foreclosure and was involved in an infamous dispute with his then-partner Yair Levy that led to Levy hitting Swig in the head with an ice bucket.
Swig survived the ice bucket incident, and by 2021, he was the recipient of the RED Awards’ Distinguished New Yorker of the Year award.
At first, Swig said he was “suspect” of the awards, but he quickly became a believer. Swig said he became so infatuated with the events that he now shares office space with Yalcin at 747 Third Avenue.
“This is peer-to-peer recognition,” Swig said. “You can go do great things for charities and you get recognized, but this is your industry.”
Yalcin has gotten emotional during awards presentations. Past honorees have included compliance architects, custom cabinetry design firms, demolition contractors, 1031 exchange brokers, and, yes, elevator contractors.
“We all use elevators. It’s something important,” Yalcin said. “So I think somebody had to recognize them and I’m glad we were the ones that did it.”
The Horatio Alger award show
On the night of the gala, Yalcin arrived hours before the 7 p.m. start time sporting a scarlet patterned tuxedo jacket, matching bow tie and loafers, and white pants. He handed out orders to the event staff and roamed the room taking videos on his phone.
In one corner, dazzling women prepared for interviews with winners. In the other, an older man in a red-and-black tuxedo, deeply balding with his remaining hairs slicked back, was working on his camera.
His name: Alan Action Schneider.
His business card features roughly 10 companies and a photo of himself pointing directly into the lens. His various ventures include car collecting, buying condemned properties, television production and special events promotion. Other past businesses include promoting Sugar Daddy events, or mixers where older men can meet women, and being the spokesperson for SugarDaddyForMe.com.
Action is part of the RED Awards production crew, though he said the relationships he built through the events helped pull him into real estate.
“Being in the car-collecting business, true to form, I never thought I’d be in the real estate business,” said Action. “Now I own a former bank, a church, a former school…”
Action’s life is unusually eclectic. But the underlying story is remarkably common inside the RED Awards universe. Attendees said the events helped them build genuine business relationships — and, in some cases, entirely new careers.
“I’ve met really good people that I’ve established, not only business relationships, but friendships,” said Jacobs.
Of course, awards can also function as a place to repair reputations.
In 2022, the RED Awards honored developer Josh Schuster with Comeback Developer of the Year, even as Schuster faced civil lawsuits from investors. Three years later, federal prosecutors accused him of stealing more than $10 million from investors “to fund his lifestyle and pay off earlier investors in a Ponzi-like fashion.” Earlier this year, Schuster pleaded guilty to securities fraud.
“Sometimes we make a mistake,” Yalcin said. “But how would we know?”
Honorees strutted toward the stage as the paparazzi followed them. They started their speeches next to Knakal and a silent Yalcin.
Industry acceptance speeches tend to be excruciating tropes about hard work and tough challenges, with no mention of the prominent family business, Ivy League diploma or hefty charitable donation made right before the recognition.
The RED Awards speeches struck a different tone.
Many recipients were immigrants — or children of immigrants — telling stories that sounded closer to Horatio Alger’s tales of children with poor upbringings who rose to middle-class prosperity through hard work.
In his speech, Sattar recalled learning that his mother in Pakistan needed high-risk heart surgery shortly after he began buying apartment buildings.
Without enough cash left to continue to buy apartments, Sattar said he decided to partner with friends on a real estate deal — a decision that eventually led to the creation of his company, Emaret Capital Group.
“My mom has recovered really well,” he said.
Desiree Yadidi of Sioni Group, representing her father and uncle who won the Skyscraper Development of the Year for Sioni’s Casoni project, spoke about the family’s proud Iranian-Jewish lineage. Sioni is putting up a supertall with a wavy glass facade at West 37th Street, where the 81-story skyscraper at 989 Sixth Avenue towers over its Garment District neighbors.
“This tower marks a new era, while remaining deeply rooted in where we began,” Desiree Yadidi said. “Our story spans three generations.”
J. Scott Scheel, winner of the Visionary Vanguard Award for Pioneering Excellence Education and Wealth Creation in Commercial Real Estate for 25 Years, noted how big of a moment this was for him, “a high school-educated kid from Cleveland, Ohio.”
The last winner, Real Estate Advocate of the Year Humberto Lopes, ranted about the Mamdani Administration before stepping off the stage.
An exhausted-looking Knakal ended the ceremony with a closing speech.
“Go get them, everybody,” said Knakal. “Have a great night.”
But the party wasn’t over.
Action kept interviewing winners and Yalcin glad-handed attendees. The women in sparkly dresses snapped still more selfies.
The mingling here means something. At the RED Awards, an unrecognized name to the industry can find themselves chatting with Knakal, top brokers or even industry icons like Ryan Serhant or Don Peebles, who attended previous years.
Here, everyone has a chance to live out their fantasy.
Yalcin becomes an international impresario, rubbing shoulders with foreign dignitaries. Jacobs transforms from a bankruptcy lawyer into an industry power player. Alan Action Schneider plays the part of a distressed real estate investor, broadcaster and social butterfly.
The RED Awards are a strangely sincere spectacle — a corporate ballroom filled with people being the person they dream they could be.
But if the event series is a business for its founder, Selman Yalcin, that’s because he has tapped into something simple, profound and human: Everyone wants a trophy, and they want to receive it in front of their loved ones.
The RED Awards offers the real estate world’s little-known and never-thanked a chance to show off success.
The fantasy keeps growing. Soon, to the Royal Palace of Bucharest. The next stop could be anywhere. There’s a shiny new ballroom coming to the White House, after all. Best Real Estate Developer Turned Commander in Chief could be on the program. Worth a shot.