Mauricio and Alexia Umansky and Farrah Brittany will take the stage at New York at Inman Connect to deliver exclusive insights on how they built a successful team, how they work together as a family and how they’ve used media to build their brand. Register now.
Netflix’s Buying Beverly Hills, starring The Agency’s Mauricio Umansky, daughters Farrah Brittany and Alexia Umansky, and other agents from the Beverly Hills locale, drops on Friday, Nov. 4, 2022.
What makes this show stand out from the sea of other real estate reality TV options out there? It’s real drama, not fake drama, Mauricio Umansky said.
In fact, that’s part of how a well-known “House Husband,” who’s appeared on a variety of shows including Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and Million Dollar Listing, and his daughters ended up with a show on Netflix after 13 years on Bravo’s reality TV.
“I never ever wanted to sell myself until I got the show I wanted. And the show I wanted was something that was going to be, we keep saying real … but real is the right adjective. And I wanted it to be something that also had teaching moments,” Mauricio said.
“Anybody that knows me knows that the way I lead is through teaching and through teaching by experiences and sharing my experiences, but also allowing people to make mistakes and through mistakes, learning. And that shows.”
The show is focused on young professionals, including Alexia Umansky, and their struggles in figuring out if they have what it takes to make it in real estate, to sell high-end luxury homes, and to work at The Agency.
“Something I realized about our show, that I think in comparison to others, is that we all really did this for the sake of our careers, and nothing more … We’re not people that want to be famous, we don’t really care about that. We really just did this because we’ve seen the success it’s brought others,” Alexia Umansky said.
The cast
In addition to Farrah Brittany and Alexia and Mauricio Umansky, the show features eight other cast members, who are mostly new in their careers.
The Agency put out an open call for cast and invited agents to put themselves “on tape.” From there, they narrowed down about 80 video submissions to the final cast: Allie Lutz Rosenberger, Melissa Platt, Santiago Arana, Brandon Graves, Jon Grauman, Ben Belack, Sonika Vaid and Joey Ben-Zvi.
“And I can tell you, it was a really hard selection,” Mauricio said. They set out to find young professionals so that the audience could watch their growth, rather than simply choosing top agents.
We chose a lot of our young, rising stars that, hopefully, make it, Mauricio said.
His advice to them before filming?
“Do not try to do something that you don’t do … if you dress in Gap clothing because you can’t afford Dolce & Gabbana, dress in Gap clothing … Be you,” Mauricio said. “And I think that everybody listened, and everybody just allowed themselves to be real and vulnerable, and it shows on television.”
The lessons
However, he didn’t have any special advice for his daughters, he said. Because they’ve been filming Real Housewives of Beverly Hills since Alexia was 13, they’re fairly seasoned at being around cameras.
However, Alexia did have nerves about showcasing her professional life on camera, after having been in real estate for three years.
Her mom and OG housewife, Kyle Richards, told her, “Nothing that bad can happen to you if you’re just yourself. The best version of you is who you truly are, and whether you make mistakes, or you get emotional, or sometimes you have a bad day and you do something that’s not your most proud moment, that’s OK because it is real life, and nobody’s perfect.”
In the show’s trailer (which you can see in full above), viewers get a glimpse of Alexia’s struggles throughout the season, from mispronouncing Carrara marble to being questioned about whether she’s a fit for real estate.
“I really did learn so much, and I can tell you, I’m not the agent that I was when I started this. And I’ve done a great deal of great transactions since this show. But I think that I owe so much to the mistakes I have made,” Alexia told Inman.
What’s the biggest lesson she learned? To never come unprepared. “I mean, you think you know something, like, times two on your homework? Make sure you know. And above all, it’s OK to look at your notes,” Alexia said.
In hindsight, she said she realized she was trying so hard to remember everything and be the picture-perfect agent. But if you don’t know something, it’s better to just be honest and whip out the phone to find out. It’s OK to do that, she said.
Get Inman’s Luxury Lens Newsletter delivered right to your inbox. A weekly roundup of all the biggest news in the world of high-end real estate delivered every Friday. Click here to subscribe.
