Dina Goldentayer sits at the apex of ultra-luxury real estate in Miami.
She has closed deals involving billionaire Jeff Bezos, tennis pro Caroline Wozniacki and former celebrity couple Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner. Her sales volume has exceeded $2 billion annually since 2021, and at Douglas Elliman, she’s been the firm’s No. 1 individual agent for three years running.
At the center of her ascent is an image, crafted carefully on social media. Goldentayer, 42, has more than 100,000 followers on her Instagram account, @goldendina. In video posts, you see Goldentayer, long blonde hair framing her face, prepping homes or selling the property du jour. Hand propped on her hip — her typical pose — she rattles off stats about design, water frontage and amenities, cut with dramatic B-roll of helicopters landing on properties or the sun rising over the glistening bay. She invites followers to “Step Inside With Me” — her trademarked phrase, though her former partner used it first.
One video compiles photos of Goldentayer, posing, in a video set to the audio from rapper Armani White’s “Billie Eilish” song.
“Bitch, I’m stylish
Glock tucked, big T-shirt, Billie Eilish”
The caption: “Be Yourself: Everyone Else is Already Taken,” an Oscar Wilde quote.
In other words, no one can accuse Dina Goldentayer of being quiet or reserved, of flying under the radar or dodging the spotlight. She is ambitious and unapologetic, qualities she does not hide. There are no excuses in her world.
“I subscribe to the theory that if you’ve earned it, you’ve earned it, and if the buyer wanted to work with you, they would have worked with you,” she said.
Online, Goldentayer is direct, playful and inviting, sometimes even silly. These are qualities she possesses in real life, too. She dresses up for themed video shoots and offers glimpses of her family life.
But social media is a projection. Edited Instagram videos usually mask more complicated realities. Goldentayer has ruffled feathers with agents in and outside of Elliman. Some of her deals have sparked lawsuits over commissions, including a recent high-profile transaction where a seller has accused Douglas Elliman of shielding the fact that the buyer who wanted a discount on an $85 million home was billionaire Jeff Bezos. Goldentayer represented both buyer and seller.
The climb
Goldentayer was born in Moldova and emigrated to the U.S. when she was 7 years old. She described the move as “rough.” Her family settled in Baltimore, and she attended the University of Maryland, majoring in government and politics with a minor in women’s studies. She uses that degree to help her negotiate.
She graduated a year early and headed to Miami to take a break before law school.
Then 21, Goldentayer was waitressing at the now-shuttered nightclub Mint when she bought her first property, a $323,000 condo in South Beach, in 2004. Her agent was Jeff Miller, a longtime broker in Miami Beach. At the time, he was her manager at Mint.
That’s when she decided to get her own real estate license.
She never went to law school.
“It was the best decision,” she said.
“Dina grabbed her business by the horns.”
She joined Carson Realty Group, a boutique brokerage that was later acquired by Elliman.
At 26, she brokered a $3.2 million deal — a milestone. Goldentayer said she “lingered” around that price point: “It took me a while to get into double digits.”
At Carson Realty, Goldentayer partnered with Sladja Stantic, who would later use the slogan “Step Inside with Sladja.”
The two moved to One Sotheby’s International Realty as the DS Team, and in 2016 they joined Elliman to work on sales for developer David Martin’s Eighty Seven Park, a luxury condo building on the ocean in Miami Beach.
Two years later, Goldentayer and Stantic split. They had been together 12 years. Stantic, who did not respond to requests for comment, returned to One Sotheby’s in 2018.
“It was a great relationship, but it just ran its course,” Goldentayer said.
Jay Parker, CEO of Douglas Elliman Florida, said that “like some partnerships that don’t work perfectly,” Stantic and Goldentayer decided to end things.
“Dina grabbed her business by the horns,” he said.
About the same time, Goldentayer made her Instagram account public. She called her investment in social media the “most dramatic, influential” change for her business. “I can attribute over $200 million in sales to just Instagram,” she said.
(Miami-Dade County Circuit Court)
Michael Ruiz, owner of the entertainment company Legendary Productions, started working with Goldentayer five years ago, when he suggested she get in front of the camera.
“At the time this was happening, the star of production was the homes,” Ruiz said. “Now she’s the star, and the home complements her and her brand. Her creative side opened up and she 10x-ed it.”
As they did for other agents, pandemic trends also helped supercharge Goldentayer’s career. She doubled down on her social media marketing, and she invested in billboards in other markets inviting people to #MoveToMiami, joining the public relations campaign to entice wealthy homeowners and CEOs to move their lives and businesses to South Florida. She’s had billboards in Silicon Valley, Boston, Los Angeles, the Hamptons and more recently in Toronto.
Home prices skyrocketed, and Goldentayer’s business ramped up alongside those of her competitors, including the Jills Zeder Group, Dora Puig, Julian Johnston and the now-disgraced Oren Alexander. Like them, Goldentayer was working outside of the Miami Beach bubble, from Golden Beach to Coral Gables. In 2023, she cracked the golden list of the top 10 real estate agents nationwide.
A majority — at least 65 — of her career sales have been on the Venetian Islands, where she lives with her husband, Ilya Panchernikov, managing director of Caviar Russe, a caviar importer and distributor with restaurants in New York and Miami. Occasionally, she shows her two young children on Instagram, though she never showed she was pregnant on social media.
In 2021, the couple spent $8.9 million to acquire David Martin’s waterfront San Marino Island home, which they rent out. Goldentayer also listed that property.
Blurred lines
Goldentayer, a self-described perfectionist and micromanager, has acknowledged that it is “always about succeeding,” especially as an immigrant.
“Sometimes I’m a pillar of calm,” she said in a podcast interview this year. “Sometimes I’m losing my ish.”
In her interview with The Real Deal, she tried to qualify that confession.
“I’m not trying to enter other marketplaces. I’m not trying to start my own brokerage,” she said. “I’m able to say no to a lot of business, and I can really just focus on the business that I want.”
Still, most brokers at the top of their game have their not-so-great qualities. Some agents won’t work with Goldentayer because of hers.
Goldentayer has been said to avoid deals with certain agents to protect her ranking, and to aggressively pursue buyers working with other agents. She has been removing listing photos and property descriptions after closing properties out on the Multiple Listing Service, in what some agents allege is an effort to gatekeep that information from other brokers who may need it in the future.
Goldentayer isn’t the only agent to do that, and it’s not against the rules. But other agents call it another example of “not playing fair or nice in the sandbox with everybody else,” according to one who spoke anonymously.
“I have the best photos in the business, and I see no reason why they should be floating out there once the property is no longer on the market,” Goldentayer said.
As for the claim that she avoids some agents, Goldentayer said: “As they say: Haters gonna hate. I want to close the deal.” She said she’ll get along with “whoever has a buyer for my listing.”
None of that rises to the level of a commission dispute, though Goldentayer has been involved in a few of those too.
In a lawsuit filed in 2020, Harding Realty alleges that it was cut out of the nearly $24 million sale of a waterfront Bal Harbour mansion to Chewy founder Ryan Cohen. (Attorneys for the trust that purchased the property claim Cohen is not the owner.)
Goldentayer was the listing agent.
Harding Realty agent Moshe Goldshtein registered the buyers with Elliman to lock in his 2.5 percent commission as the buyers’ agent, according to the complaint. But Elliman excluded Harding Realty from showing the property and ultimately struck its own deal with the buyers, Harding Realty alleges. (Goldshtein has since left Harding.)
An email Goldshtein sent to Goldentayer shows he gave notice that he was representing Cohen, his wife, Candice, and their family.
“I’m not trying to enter other marketplaces. I’m not trying to start my own brokerage. I’m able to say no to a lot of business, and I can really just focus on the business that I want.”
Harding is seeking half of the nearly $1.2 million commission. The Miami Association of Realtors’ residential grievance committee reviewed and dismissed a request for arbitration, and the suit is pending in the courts.
In another example, real estate agent Alyssa Morgan alleges that her ex-husband, John Jansheski, cut her out of the $57 million sale for his waterfront Star Island home and gave the listing to Goldentayer, even though Morgan had presented an offer for $70 million from the same buyer a year earlier. The allegations are from a lawsuit Morgan refiled against Jansheski in August.
Though Goldentayer isn’t named as a defendant, the suit’s claims suggest she swooped in and was given credit for a deal Morgan had been negotiating for months.
The Indian Creek affair
Luxury real estate in South Florida is lucrative, and you don’t get to the top 10 without fighting your way in.
What happened in Indian Creek gives a glimpse of how these big deals get done. Brazilian mogul Leo Kryss enlisted Goldentayer last year to list his property at 12 Indian Creek Island Road. They asked $85 million. The 19,000-square-foot estate, with a reflecting pool, 200 feet of bayfront, seven bedrooms and 14 bathrooms, sits on nearly 2 acres.
Goldentayer described it as “Exuding Timeless European Glamour” and invited buyers to “Be the Master of Your own Majestic Estate” in social media posts showcasing the property.
In August of last year, an unknown entity made an offer, but it was just $79 million.
Kryss asked Goldentayer and Danilo Tavares, another agent on the listing, if Jeff Bezos was tied to the purchasing trust, according to a lawsuit filed by Kryss.
It wasn’t a random suggestion, since Bezos had recently bought a home next door for $68 million.
Goldentayer and Tavares answered that they didn’t know, according to the complaint. Goldentayer has access to Parker, Elliman’s Florida CEO, to the point where she can bring him with her to listing appointments. Unexpectedly, Parker called Kryss and insisted that Bezos was not the buyer. The buyer, he claimed, was Indian Creek Mayor Benny Klepach.
Elliman was also handling the other side of the transaction — via the trust — with the very same team. Goldentayer and Tavares did not know who was behind the entity, they said.
But Kryss’ hunch was right. In September 2023, the Bezos trust entered into a purchase agreement for Kryss’ property for $79 million, a 7 percent discount from asking.
Goldentayer marked the deal with a video montage of her and the property, mentioning that it was the highest sale to ever close on Indian Creek Island. (That may have been a subtle dig at former competitor Oren Alexander, who previously held records on the island.)
Goldentayer isn’t named as a defendant, but as the agent with the biggest split, she likely collected the majority of the $3.2 million commission Elliman received.
Goldentayer’s alleged behavior behind the scenes offers a different version of reality from the one she presents online as @goldendina and in the media. But as someone in the 1 percent of real estate agents, her strategy is working so far.
Parker, who declined to comment on the litigation, acknowledged that Goldentayer’s behavior can be “perceived as aggressive” in a cutthroat industry.
“She’s someone who is not willing to simply capitulate to get the deal done. She’s going to fight,” he said. “She’s very, very effective at leveraging her relationships.”