Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Luxe Listings Sydney’, Where Three Real Estate Colleagues Buy And Sell Exclusive Properties In Australia’s Poshest Area

Luxe Listings Sydney is pretty much how the title describes it; it’s a reality show where three of the top people in the Sydney real estate game buy and sell properties in the city’s exclusive eastern suburbs. These are properties that can go upwards of the low eight figures. It’s Amazon’s first big entry into the real estate reality show genre that lately has been dominated by Netflix.

LUXE LISTINGS SYDNEY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Shots of the Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Harbor Bridge, then scenes of the first season of Luxe Listings Sydney.

The Gist: Gavin Rubenstein knows what’s at stake in the East Sydney market, so he gathers his staff at a property in Dover Heights he’s looking to list for an eye-popping $12 million. He’s celebrating the first anniversary of his firm, and he’s proud of what his team has done to this point, selling over $500 million of properties in that first year.

His friend Simon Cohen is a buyer’s agent, who represents massively wealthy clients and tours houses on their behalf. He comes to the property in Dover Heights and really likes it, though he gives his usual list of shortcomings, including the fact that the infinity pool overlooks the street. He tells Gavin he won’t offer more than $9 million for it.

D’Leanne Lewis has been in this market for decades and has been the top seller at her agency for 18 years running; she tells a potential new assistant not to give in to the glitz of the business, obviously referring to Gavin and his staff, with the custom suits and shiny sports cars. She shows Simon a property called “The Art House” and he tells her that the kitchen is “pedestrian.”

Simon takes two of his staffers to his parent’s house for Shabbat dinner, because he considers his staffers to be family. But all they do is get on his case about settling down.

Simon is friends with both Gavin and D’Leanne, but the relationship between the two agents is cordial at best. Gavin tells his brother/business partner while on a shirtless jog that he doesn’t consider D’Leanne his main competition and that her time has passed. Those tensions come out on a yacht party Simon throws to celebrate his firm’s tenth anniversary. D’Leanne, who looks like she wants to be anywhere but on that yacht, gets into it with one of Gavin’s agents about poaching one of her listings, then complains to Gavin that she doesn’t like his slick nature. She basically says, “I’ll kick your ass,”… in real estate, of course.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Selling Sunset crossed with Million Dollar Listing franchise and the brotastic Netflix series Million Dollar Beach House.

Our Take: Luxe Listings Sydney looks for all the world like a standard real estate reality series, with pulsating dance pop and hip hop punctuating intersititals of the bustling city in between scenes. The three main “characters” are friendly but are in competition with each other; even Simon, who’s on the buyer’s end of the transaction, is competing because he wants to spend the least of his clients’ money as possible while Gavin and D’Leanne want to get the most.

But, by balancing the slick Gavin with the family-oriented Simon and the super-pragmatic D’Leanne, the show veers away from the douchenozzlery that can dominate other shows like this. Gavin can say all he wants that he doesn’t consider D’Leanne serious competition, but she’s at the top of her profession for a reason. And Simon comments on why the two butt heads, because they’re both at the top of the heap.

And Simon himself is full of surprises. Sure, he acts like a slick operator, but then he’s close to his parents. He’s a buyer’s agent, so he’s not trying to oversell something, like Gavin does to him. He’s there to find the flaws in the seemingly gleaming property, something that we find refreshing; it’s usually the dour clients themselves that are in that position on these shows.

We also appreciated D’Leanne knocking Gavin and his slicked-back staff down a few notches. It shows that, while Gavin has the goods, he’s not top of the heap just yet. That’s where the drama will likely be. Is it going to be drama like we see in Selling Sunset? Probably not. But seeing all the agents get along with each other and just show gorgeous properties would have been boring as hell.

Sex and Skins: Besides a party guest getting into a one-piece and dunking herself in the yacht’s hot tub, there’s nothing.

Parting Shot: The auction for the Dover Heights property begins, with the auctioneer telling the gathered bidders that they found the right property that afternoon.

Sleeper Star: We like Tammy Soglanich, an associate agent at Simon’s firm. At the party, L’Deanne jokingly tries to lure her to her agency. And Tammy says right in front of Simon — with love! — that “sometimes he drives me nuts!”.

Most Pilot-y Line: Seriously, all the male agents at Gavin’s agency look exactly the same. And when one of them talks about buying a Porsche with three other d-nozzles, I thought that was Gavin talking.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Did we wish Luxe Listings Sydney not feature the same old brotastic agents doing brotastic things? Sure. We’d also like the show to be a little more diverse than it is. But at least it presents counterpoints to the stereotypical slick high-end real estate agent that make the show at least a little more interesting.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Luxe Listings Sydney On Prime Video