Compass’ Leonard Steinberg has a lot of thoughts about real estate reality television. Douglas Elliman’s Eleonora Srugo takes issue with most of them — including his comments about her footwear of choice on the first episode of her show, “Selling the City.”
“They’re not stripper heels, they’re like $1,500 heels,” the agent said, correcting the record on stage at The Real Deal’s NYC forum (indeed, the pink platforms she had on at the forum were Valentino).
Srugo was joined on stage by so-titled Chief Evangelist Steinberg — sporting chunky white Hokas — in a wide-ranging debate about the state of reality television in the industry that touched on the sartorial, the sexual and, if only briefly, the actual selling.
The pair repeatedly talked over each other, and the moderator, TRD senior editor Ellen Cranley, frequently had to rein them back in, in an effort to get the points across.
Steinberg and Srugo dove into the murky waters of how women exist in a male-dominated society and ultimately ended up debating second- and third-wave feminism, albeit in a roundabout way.
“If I was a woman, I would feel extremely disappointed,” Steinberg said of reality television in the industry. “I think it over-sexualizes the role of the professional.”
Srugo, the actual woman onstage, responded by explaining that women “live in a world where we simply appear more sexualized than men — we have more sexual components to our bodies.”
She also called out the hypocrisy of the critique. “The only people that took any clothes off were the men,’ Srugo said of her show.
Srugo and Steinberg also butted heads on the aspirational aspect of reality TV.
“I got into the industry 15 years ago when everybody here was on Craigslist trying to get clients,” Srugo said. “There was a universal sentiment that real estate was for people who had failed in other industries.”
Her successes, she argued, gave hope to aspiring agents.
Steinberg countered that many agents who rode the small screen to fame might not have been able to do so without it. “I think reality TV has made star agents of agents who might have otherwise been rather mediocre,” he said.
Steinberg, who infamously appeared on the pilot episode of “Million Dollar Listing,” renounced his brief time in the public eye as well.
“It’s too fake, too often,” he said, referencing the fact that the apartment shown in his episode was already under contract and the negotiations took place on speaker phone at Cipriani, something he said has never happened to him in real life. (“This is a lot of commentary on ‘Million Dollar Listing,’” Srugo, who never appeared on the show, countered.)
Steinberg said the ease with which agents appear to do deals on the programming has hindered the industry’s reputation. “Simply look at the $1 billion paid out last year,” he said of the antitrust settlements signed throughout the industry.
Srugo described social media as another glossy public performance that many agents, including Steinberg, use often in their jobs. She pointed to the fact that agents are simply using the tools at their disposal, which may have changed since Steinberg entered the business.
“We don’t have anything to offer other than ourselves,” she said.