Another week, another confusing episode of Million Dollar Listing San Francisco. There's certainly plenty of real estate drama in this town, with heated bidding wars leading to places selling for millions over asking, ever-soaring prices, and plenty of gorgeous homes. So why all the manufactured drama around accepting bids for under asking prices and struggling to woo buyersto homes that we are constantly told are overpriced? It seems like the show would be more interesting and could draw on reality a tad more if it followed around agents working with buyers trying to score a house. But, alas, this week there was another round of below-asking offers and silly negotiations in fancy restaurants around town.
Justin is the only agent with a new listing this week. Although a few weeks ago he was aiming to be the go-to agent in the Mission, he's now bounced over to Pacific Heights to sell a two-bedroom, two-bathroom penthouse at 2959 Pacific Avenue. The seller, an obnoxious "celebrity dentist" (is there such a thing?) named Alan refuses to put the home on the MLS, which means it is difficult for Justin to sell and even harder for us to do our usual investigations into reality versus reality television. Alan bought the place back in 1995 for $785,000 and now wants $4 million for it. He thinks his comp should be the record-setting 2006 Washington penthouse that sold off-market for $30 million earlier this year, but, as Justin explains to him, this place is no 2006 Washington. It's outdated with a tiny kitchen, although it does have a huge roof deck as its major redeeming quality.
In the oddest scene yet so far on this show, Kathy Hilton—mom to Paris and Nicky Hilton—makes an incredibly random guest appearance to have breakfast with Alan and to chastise Justin for not selling the house quickly enough. She quizzes Justin about his tactics and deems the kitchen wonderful. Potential buyers, however, feel differently, calling the place "too gaudy," "very mature," and "too peach." After Alan turns down a $3.7 million offer and refuses to let the penthouse go on the MLS yet again, Justin breaks up with his client in the dining room at Spruce and walks away from the listing. It's enough to make us wonder if this entire storyline was just a fake all along.
Roh and Andrew get to interact this week when Roh's buyers fall in love with Andrew's supposedly horrid Bernal listing. Andrew gleefully plans to screw Roh over in the negotiations, but in the end both sides end up walking away with what they want as Roh's clients buy the house for $1.9 million. The weird part about this whole interaction is that the listing was sold, at least according to the MLS, by Amanda Jones. Jones works for Sotheby's, like Andrew, but has her own group within the agency. She's never mentioned on the show.
Although Roh has a big win representing the buyers on Andrew's listing, he's struggling to sell the penthouse at 8 Octavia. Despite the unit's floors that come from a Benedictine monastery and louvers that can be used to direct the sunlight, there's a lack of storage and closet space. Roh explains that architect Stanley Saitowitz was "worried more about design that functionality." Roh ends up with an offer for $2.3 million, well below the unit's $2.685 million ask. He heads off to Gitane to give the offer to Alan Mark of The Mark Company, the marketing and sales firm handling 8 Octavia sales. Alan is unsurprisingly unimpressed by the offer, but he, Roh and the buyer go back and forth until they end up at $2.599 million.
Given that all of the agents either sold or, in Justin's case, walked away from the listings they had this week, there should be plenty of new properties to gawk at in next week's episode.
· Recapping 'Million Dollar Listing San Francisco' Episode Two [Curbed SF]
· 2006 Washington Penthouse Officially Sold, Final Price Rumored at a Record-Setting $30M [Curbed SF]
· Last Night's 'Million Dollar Listing' Got Bernal Heights Hilariously Wrong [Curbed SF]
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