Bravo Realty Show Goes For Brokers In Sf

The Bay Area’s latest Gold Rush — technology — is throwing the real estate market for a loop, with homes going for seven figures over the asking price to cash-wielding clients. Two cast members, Justin Fichelson, 29, of Climb Real Estate, and Roh Habibi, 33, of Coldwell Banker Previews International, hope to conduct a lofty $50 million in transactions this year, which would put them in the ranks of the region’s top luxury agents, while third cast member Andrew Greenwell, 31, of Venture Sotheby’s International Realty in Pleasanton, regards that as child’s play. With big money and braggadocio standard fare for this series, what promises to set the San Francisco show apart from franchises in Los Angeles and New York is the Bay Area’s diversity. Greenwell, a gay white male, Fichelson, a straight Jewish socialite, and Habibi, an Orthodox Muslim (the first cast member with a wife and child in series history), will bring a new sort of combustion to this series, and will plumb issues of race, culture and religion — uncharted territory for “Million Dollar Listing.” “It’s risky having me in the cast,” said Habibi, born in Kabul, Afghanistan, to parents who escaped the Soviet-Afghan war in 1985 with sherpas who led the family on donkeys into Pakistan. Randy Barbato, an executive producer at World Wide Wonder, responsible for all four of the “Million Dollar Listing” franchises, said a heavier show with more socially conscious themes was not contrived and happened organically. Habibi, formerly in banking, switched to real estate and included “future cast member of ‘Million Dollar Listing’” on his social media accounts, hoping to get on the show. (Los Angeles is in its eighth; New York its fourth.) By the time the network returned to San Francisco, Habibi was more seasoned — and prices in San Francisco’s real estate market had increased. Filming began in October and concluded in June, when the San Francisco cast members made two appearances — at a symposium for veteran luxury real estate agents in the Presidio on June 4, and at Google, which hosts educational talks for its employees, on June 29. Ryan Serhant, a Houston native who has appeared on four seasons of the New York show, went from being a hand model to a real estate agent with more than $500 million in sales and a team of 23 employees last year. [...] Josh Altman, who appeared on the Los Angeles show, sold more than $300 million of real estate last year with his brother, a business partner, to buyers both foreign and domestic. On the show, Fichelson, a quirky, laid-back San Francisco native, boasts that he has “the largest social network of anyone in San Francisco real estate.” Greenwell has created several brokerages and worked with tech clients in Seattle before arriving in the Bay Area and selling homes in the East Bay and in Wine Country. On camera, he chokes up talking about his determination to make his parents’ sacrifice worthwhile, noting, “If someone’s going to give up everything for you, to make something of yourself, the worst thing you can do is be a failure.” Despite a reputation for privacy, San Franciscans, the agents said, turned out to be no more or less private than buyers and sellers in other cities when it came to being on camera. Cast members called the interviews therapeutic, while producers said the chats added voice, authenticity and humor to the show. Jenn Levy, a senior vice president of production at Bravo, said in a follow-up interview that women are always interviewed in the search for people with the “right business, the right personality and who are in the right moments of their lives and careers.”