Real Estate Porn

It would be hard for a real-estate-porn addict not to be completely obsessed with "Selling New York," HGTV's reality show about two high-end Manhattan real estate firms.

Although the profession itself is as tedious to watch as it is to listen to when your friends in the business yammer on and on about their day -- "Then they said they didn't want to pay that much ... then they said they wanted to try another neighborhood ... then I never heard from them again ..." -- the show allows you to peek in on some of the most glorious apartments in the world, without having to sit through another one of Woody Allen's crappy movies from the last 15 years. (My apologies to Melinda and Melinda.) You can almost hear the producers whispering to the brokers to force them to say, "And my client only has a $2.5 million budget," knowing that a husband is choking on his Hamburger Helper somewhere in Kansas.

The show is divided between two firms, one Uptown and one Downtown. The Uptown team -- represented by the Kleier family of Gumley Haft Kleier, with broker Michele, her husband Ian, and their daughter-brokers Samantha Kleier Forbes and Sabrina Kleier Morgenstern -- should be the less interesting team -- less interesting neighborhoods, a pleasant family dynamic -- yet somehow they make for far more compelling television. It's almost comical watching two young women walking around with a clone of what they will look like in 30 years, and their affection for one another is palpable.

The Downtown team from CORE Group -- represented by CEO Shaun Osher (who has a certain sex appeal in a Daddy kind of way), flame-haired Canadian Maggie Kent (who seems to specialize in telling people their apartments aren't worth nearly as much as they think -- we can only imagine how she handles her love interests) and Kirk Rundhaug (who always seems a bit rattled for no reason) and the -- has its share of a camera-ready talent, yet still lacks star quality.

You can't help but wonder why the CORE agent with by far the most "on-camera" experience, Fredrik Eklund -- whose curiously expansive Wikipedia page details his cum rags to riches story from gay porn star to broker to the stars (Cameron Diaz, John Legend) -- isn't featured more prominently. (He's only appeared in scenes of group meetings.) One guess is that he doesn't play well with others -- he did, after all, win the GayVN Award for Best Solo Performance for "The Hole" back in 2004. Perhaps Osher should consider recruiting one of the winners of the award for Best Group Scene instead. Johnny Hazzard, Matt Summers, Logan Reed, Chad Hunt, Matt Majors, Andy Hunter and Mike Johnson shared that one in '04 for their work in "Detention."