Realtor Culture Is Cringe
The industry’s obsession with looking successful instead of being successful
The real estate industry is supposed to be about helping people buy and sell homes. Yet somehow, it’s turned into a bad reality show audition. Instead of professionalism, strategy, and market expertise, we’re flooded with flashy social media content, over-the-top flexing, and agents who seem more focused on looking rich than actually making money.
It’s like every realtor saw Selling Sunset once and thought, “Yes. That’s exactly what this industry needs - more plastic surgery, designer bags, and staged brunch meetings where no actual business is happening.”
Realtor culture has officially become cringe.
The Productivity Theatre
Before Selling Sunset, the most you’d get from an agent on social media was a well-scripted market update or a “how-to” for first time buyers. Now? It’s all about aesthetic over substance. Agents are out here acting like they live the same lifestyle as their millionaire clients, when in reality, they’re struggling to close two deals a year. In fact, they’re probably not even closing two deals according to the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB). Agents averaged less than one transaction in 2024. In 2023, 50% of TRREB agents completed zero deals.
According to realtor.com, in 2024, Selling Sunset star Jason Oppenheim, founder and president of The Oppenheim Group, led the team with approximately $20 million in sales. Chrishell Stause, a prominent agent and former actress, achieved around $11.2 million in property sales during the same period. Mary Bonnet, serving as vice president, has accumulated over $105 million in sales throughout her career. Nicole Young, who joined the firm in 2014, recorded sales totalling $6.17 million in 2024. Brett Oppenheim, co-founder, matched closely with his brother, amassing sales of approximately $10.6 million in the same year.
Brace yourself for what I’m about to say - because these numbers are far from impressive. In fact, top-performing individual agents in my region outproduce these figures with ease. To hit Nicole’s production in the Hamilton area, an agent would only have to sell eight homes annually.
Highly productive agents in my market would likely raise an eyebrow at these stats, if not outright laugh. And to be clear, this isn’t a critique of their work - it’s simply an illustration of how Selling Sunset is more about optics than actual production. But let’s be honest, we already knew that.
Real success isn’t renting a lifestyle for Instagram. It’s closing deals, being the ultimate resource, and actually knowing what you’re doing with people’s money.
Optics Obsession
One of the downfalls of real estate culture lies in luxury products and manufactured status. In today’s real estate industry, success is no longer measured by deals closed, it’s measured by how successful you look. And I get it, agents want to curate an image that signals success, hoping it will earn them credibility and, ultimately, clients. Real estate is a business built on perception, trust, and approval. If consumers see you as successful, they’re more likely to work with you. But in many cases, this obsession is completely misplaced, especially in my local market in the Greater Hamilton and Niagara region.
While home prices in the Hamilton area averaged around $800,000 in 2024, this is not a luxury market in the way some agents try to frame it. Yet, you’d think every listing was a multimillion-dollar mansion in Miami based on the way some agents market themselves. Hamilton is not Beverly Hills. Niagara is not NYC. So why are so many agents acting like they’re selling mansions to celebrities when most of their clients are middle-class families, first-time buyers, and downsizers? We have a diverse market with an aging Boomer population looking to downsize, Gen X homeowners waiting for the right time to cash out their equity and make their final step on the property ladder, Millennials still striving to break into homeownership, and Gen Z, who will need to navigate an increasingly competitive landscape with creativity and strategic financial planning to achieve homeownership. The obsession with optics is distasteful in light of these generational hurdles. Know your market.
Glory in Struggle
One of the most exhausting aspects of modern real estate culture is the fake hustle persona. Somewhere along the way, the industry became less about actual hard work and market expertise and more about performing the idea of being successful.
Scroll through any agent’s social media, and you’ll see it - the desperate need to manufacture the illusion of relentless hustle. The "booked and busy" captions, the "open house in a snowstorm" grind, and the "closing deals while giving birth" flex. It’s hustle cosplay, and these are all real, recent posts I’ve come across on my own social media feed.
Here’s the reality:
Your "booked and busy" posts don’t signal success - they signal a need for validation. If you were truly that overwhelmed with deals, you wouldn’t have time to constantly tell the internet about it (shoutout to Jennifer for our lengthy and valuable chat about this yesterday - I love our no-BS chats)
Your "grind never stops" open house during a snowstorm is not proof of dedication - it’s proof of a complete lack of strategy. Do you actually think buyers are braving dangerous roads just to casually browse your listing? (shoutout to my newsfeed for all the snowstorm themed open houses on Sunday)
And if you’re posting on Instagram about negotiating a deal during or shortly after childbirth, you’re not impressing anyone - you’re just telling me you have no boundaries, no delegation skills, and no control over your business (shoutout to Krystle for her valuable insights on this one yesterday, you are a constant source of inspiration for me)
At some point, the real estate industry stopped valuing competence and started glorifying struggle. But real success doesn’t come from showcasing how much you’re working - it comes from working intelligently. None of the above is a display of intelligence in my opinion. They are desperate pleas for validation. At the end of the day, real success in real estate isn’t about how much you suffer, it’s about how effectively you serve.
The Performance of Success
In real estate, success has become something to be performed rather than achieved. It’s no longer just about closing deals or refining negotiation skills, it’s about curating an image of success that feels aspirational, regardless of the reality behind it.
This isn’t necessarily about dishonesty. It’s more nuanced than that. Many agents genuinely believe that broadcasting their busyness, their grind, and their endless showings will translate into credibility. After all, visibility is important in this business. But at some point, the performance overtakes the work itself.
There’s a fine line between marketing yourself effectively and spending more time portraying success than actually achieving it. The endless posts of coffee shop laptop work sessions, the “never not working” captions, the rehearsed videos of agents staring contemplatively out of luxury condo windows - is this strategy, or is it self-preservation?
For some, it’s both. In an industry where agents are constantly fighting to stay relevant and justify their worth, maintaining the appearance of success feels like an unspoken requirement. But here’s the problem: clients don’t care how hard you hustle, they care how well you execute.
At the end of the day, is the effort going into looking like a top producer actually helping you become one? Or is it just another layer of optics in an industry already obsessed with appearances?
The Market Doesn’t Care
At the end of the day, the market doesn’t care how busy you look, how many mountains of snow you climbed over to host your open house, or how well you curate the illusion of success. It rewards competence, execution, and the ability to actually close deals.
The obsession with optics has turned real estate into a theatrical production where agents play the role of top producers while barely scraping by. But perception can only take you so far - because when the market shifts, when competition tightens, when clients start seeing through the noise, who’s left standing?
The ones who understood from the start that the real flex isn’t looking like you work hard - it’s quietly dominating while everyone else is busy performing.