Whether it’s refining your business model, mastering new technologies, or discovering strategies to capitalize on the next market surge, Inman Connect New York will prepare you to take bold steps forward. The Next Chapter is about to begin. Be part of it. Join us and thousands of real estate leaders Jan. 22-24, 2025.
Each week on The Download, Inman’s Christy Murdock takes a deeper look at the top-read stories of the week to give you what you’ll need to meet Monday head-on. This week: Can Selling Sunset‘s star bounce back from kickback accusations, or will they take a toll on his professional reputation?
Guessing games are fun, and never more so than when the guessing involves a high-profile, big-money reality TV star.
So when, amid a number of lawsuits filed this fall, Douglas Elliman executives accused employees of Portfolio Escrow of engaging in a commission-sharing scheme dating from the beginning of 2015 and involving “at least one high-profile Los Angeles real estate broker that is now a star of a reality television show,” it set off a fun round of whodunnit among both real estate professionals and reality TV fans.
Last week, Inman’s Taylor Anderson and luxury reporter Lillian Dickerson put on their deer stalkers and got to the bottom of all that chitchat.
Can’t get enough of reality TV’s biggest stars, the power moves they’re making and their impact on the industry? Be in the room where it happens at Inman Connect New York, Jan. 22-24, to hear from reality TV stars, including Ryan Serhant, Talia McKinney, Daniel Daggers, Mauricio Umansky and Santiago Arana in person.
According to a source close to the investigation, the reality TV broker is Jason Oppenheim, founder of The Oppenheim Group and star of the Netflix reality series Selling Sunset, Inman learned exclusively. Oppenheim acknowledged receiving payments from Portfolio Escrow in the past but denied wrongdoing and disputed the characterization of the arrangement as an “illegal kickback.”
“Whatever this particular structure [was], for that period of time, did occur,” Oppenheim told Inman. “But it’s something that once I was advised I shouldn’t be engaged in it, I didn’t — and I haven’t received anything before or since.”
Read the rest of Oppenheim’s response to the allegations here.
As Douglas Elliman’s lawsuits continue to wend their way through the courts, other reality TV figures are getting caught in the crossfire. The most recent big names to be accused of impropriety? The Altman Brothers.
Matt and Heather Altman denied the allegations in a statement to Inman last month.
“This happens often as we are both at the top of the real estate game and on TV,” the statement said. “We have nothing to do with any of this and it’s just desperate people looking for attention. The Altman Brothers are not named in either lawsuit.”
The past couple of years have been filled with sometimes questionable and other times flat-out bad behavior from people in power. How can you make sure that you and the people you’re working with every day are staying on the right side of your ethical obligations? This week, Inman contributors turned an eye toward the problem behaviors to shun and the positive actions that set you and your business up for success.
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