by Thinus Ferreira
The new reality series Listing Jozi from AlternaTV on BBC Lifestyle, gives an insider's look at real estate agents showcasing and selling some multimillion-rand homes in Johannesburg, something that the producers say is an opportunity for viewers "to walk into a R15 million house and to imagine that you could buy it".
Content director Nico Nel and co-producer Trevor Kaplan sat down with TVwithThinus to explain how they found the five high-end realty brokers, got buyers to open the gates to their megamansions, how Covid suddenly arrived after filming started, and how Listing Jozi doesn't just showcase opulent homes but also the real personal-life journeys of the real estate stars.
What were the challenges of filming Listing Jozi during Covid?
Nico Nel: We started out and filmed the first episode in January 2020. Everything was beautiful - there were butterflies flying all around Johannesburg, everything was green and we managed to finish the first episode at the end of March and then straight into Covid-19 lockdown.
When the hard lockdown hit us we couldn't work for a bit but then we managed to pick up filming in early June 2020.
But we also worked it into the show, so from episode 2 the guys are in lockdown, they're working from home, with all the restrictions and regulations around which the production crew was allowed to go out and start filming again.
Also, the property industry was allowed to venture back into the homes and properties that were on the market - obviously under strict protocols.
We managed to work Covid into the second episode for real estate but then we start to branch out a bit when the industry opens up again a bit in episodes 3, 4, 5 and 6. We try and steer clear from seeing people with masks on the whole time but obviously behind-the-scenes they are and doing all of the protocols to keep everyone safe.
In the middle of the season, there is Covid, it becomes almost a cast member because it affected their business considerably.
We thought that when Covid hit we would be battling to get properties to show but because of the low interest rates these guys actually starting hustling quite hard - their house sales almost jumped through the roof. And if you are hungry, you were able to make sales which helped us with the TV show.
I think we still managed to make a TV show that looks pretty. It's not tainted with a Covid-flare but it looks pretty.
Trevor Kaplan: Because we're a reality show it wasn't scripted, so you just follow what happens and Covid happened. So we built it into the show because that was what was happening in the world.
Secondly, we're a very, very small production crew, so it's not like some of these other productions we would go into a house and there might be 10 or 15 or 20 people sound and camera.
It was basically Nico and myself who did the sound. So we could have access into areas that might have been restricted if there were a larger crew and cast and production team.
Did Covid stretch out the period between a property going on sale in some cases and you filming the pitch and then having to wait months to revisit a certain house or deal?
Nico Nel: We didn't always follow from the beginning to the end. We took up certain aspects of the sale process for each of the houses.
Some might just be the negotiations of what price it should be listed at, and others would be other aspects of the process. We didn't always follow from the listing to the sale. We just took areas and I don't think Covid affected the process at all.
We were also pretty spoilt with having 5 strong agents where they all had properties at various stages - from just getting them in, to list, to do social media posting about it, getting photos done, showings and the final sale. We could pick up in various stages with various agents.
There are certain properties that keep featuring throughout the season but then there were a few instances where, for instance, one of the agents had a beautiful listing but through the course of Covid, because they're not able to service it and have beautiful launch parties, some of the properties do fall through the floor.
It's an interesting insight into the daily high's and low's of each agent and we were spoilt with 5 entertaining agents who have interesting lives and business prospects throughout the season.
Why Johannesburg first and not Cape Town and was that ever a consideration and was the series maybe always pitched as starting with Johannesburg? Why specifically Jozi?
Nico Nel: It's more a familiarity thing - we're from Johannesburg.
The idea for this show was never set out that we're going to cast the whole of South Africa and find the best. For us, we find an interesting industry and then we venture into that.
The first agent we actually met was Grahame Diedericks. He introduced us and showed us some of his properties and from there on we thought "Oh, this might be a great idea for a show - this industry is very interesting" and it just snowballed on from there.
It wasn't specifically decided "Oh Jo'burg" but definitely the rest of the country is available and we are currently looking at Listing Cape Town as well, so that's something we're actively pursuing.
We self-find all of our show so it's not a commissioning thing, so there's a lot of water that still needs to go into the ocean before we can finalise it but we are venturing into it and of course Cape Town would be phenomenal with all of the properties. We wanted to show beautiful Johannesburg like nobody has seen yet and to celebrate the opulence and rich lifestyles of Jo'burg as well.
How did you get all of the agents on board and if some of them were apprehensive, how did you sell them on the idea of going on camera?
Trevor Kaplan: We didn't have a massive casting process. So we met Grahame and we had a meeting with him and the whole show started to develop from there.
Then, through word-of-mouth, through contacts of contacts, we managed to see a few agents and to do sit-down interviews with them.
Then I think what happened was, in that first meeting with them we discussed what we would need from them and as far as houses and time and storylines, and then based on that they knew what they were getting in for. If they were not happy to give us 2 days a week for instance then they would fall by the wayside, or if they didn't have opulent houses they would fall by the wayside.
So we got a pool of agents together and for some reason, the number 5 just seemed to make sense because it was an hour episode and they could each get 10 minutes and we could have 10 minutes for something else. So that's how the 5 came about.
Then we decided to shoot a full hour episode as our pilot. During the shooting of that episode we could see the people - our "soft selection" - we could put them on camera and see how they reacted.
After that process, we did have certain of the agents who just didn't fit in with the whole process properly and at that point we got some new agents in, so they did have one episode to try and "prove" themselves or show us what they could or couldn't give us.
It's fine at the dog show to have your one dog in the competition perfectly doing what they're supposed to, but now you're dealing with a buyer and a seller and an agent and potential other clients during showings. How intricate is it to get any permutation of those people all on camera and agree to be filmed?
Nico Nel: It is quite interesting and there are a lot of interactions that didn't work on camera that we didn't end up using.
Again, it's reality - we tagged along with the agents through their day and we used the stuff that looked great on camera.
There were lots of interactions that just didn't land. Because you're dealing in a high-end bracket a lot of these people don't want to be on camera. They don't want to showcase their house. You had to make sure that the people who are keen, are really keen and willing to give you the best that you can get on camera.
It was a gamble, there was a lot of soft talk and pretty talk to make things happen but at the end of the day the agents also know that "I'm going to this house, I've got this potential buyer who is comfortable to be on camera" so at least the agents helped us negotiate that way so that when we get "on set" the potential buyer or seller has already been briefed and then the agents just do their type of thing.
Trevor Kaplan: What we did find was that maybe a seller didn't want to be on camera but they were quite happy for their house to be showcased.
In that case we would leave them out and follow the buyer going it and making an offer type of thing. We could still showcase the house even if the actual seller didn't want to be on camera.
Starting a new show, how difficult was it or what did you have to do to coax people to be willing to let you film inside their homes?
Nico Nel: Being in the property industry, these people do need to give access to the agents to take photos of their properties so we almost became a good selling point for the agents.
The agents would say "Look, we're busy shooting this show, once it airs it would help our sales process, it would be opening up your house to a bigger group of potential buyers". So, once you start throwing that it, it made it easier for the agents to get us into the properties.
I think now, after you've got a proof-of-concept - now that Listing Jozi is on BBC Lifestyle as a TV show - I don't think you'll battle going forward to finding more opulent houses.
Trevor Kaplan: We also never give out street addresses - nobody could pinpoint a place and go, "Oh, we know where this house is". That gave them a little bit of peace of mind that their home won't be showcased and being identified as "this house, in this area at this address".
Even expensive homes didn't always have infinity pools or gold-leaf ceiling paint or a chef's kitchen. Were you surprised by some of the opulence and luxury you saw in some of the properties in the real estate market in Johannesburg?
Trevor Kaplan: All of the homes have their unique features. The one thing that was highlighted for me is just how many properties are off the grid and how many properties have got solar and battery systems and water.
There were homes that had bizarre bathrooms and little rooms off to the side but the thing that I keep on coming back to - we saw one house that was 100% off the grid, including an electric car that came with the house.
Nico Nel: We will never be able to afford a R15 million house so I think with most of the population, a show like Listing Jozi is more of a TV experience: It's a chance of walking into and seeing a R15 million house.
Listing Jozi, when you start watching it, it's a family show - each member of the family will get R15 million and you have to decide whether you want to buy a house in the south that's a little bit cheaper but you get more space, as opposed to a house in the north that is more expensive but a smaller property area.
It gave us the opportunity to live vicariously through the agents and see the properties they view and it will be the same for viewers. You get the opportunity to walk into a house and to imagine that you could buy it. It's something that you don't see every day.
Trevor Kaplan: As Listing Jozi progresses it also makes you feel like a"property mogul" as the viewer, you watch it on BBC Lifestyle, and you learn with the show.
At the beginning you might say "yes I will buy that house" but at the end you say "no, I don't like the garden" or "That's not perfect", so you become a bit of an expert from the couch by the end of it that is awesome.
Were you surprised by the degree to which the agents are "characters" with larger-than-life personalities within this industry and how far they're willing to go and the smooth-talking since real estate people are so extroverted in their personalities on a whole other level?
Nico Nel: Look, that's interesting. We made sure that the people we cast for this had that flair. We were not just going to cast normal run-of-the-mill people.
For us, we noted a big change in the industry - it became a younger industry where people were used social media a lot more to promote.
They are using their social media contacts a lot more to sell properties and for us it was important to find the 5 candidates who had the ability to not just go and do an open house on a Sunday afternoon type of thing and hope people would rock up and sell a property.
We chose agents who have flair and who have a bit of an interesting personal life and we knew they were going to make the extra mile to make a sale and we knew these guys would look great on camera doing so as well.
Trevor Kaplan: If you look at Lara, her personality - she's not boisterous and out there like Grahame, she's very much much controlled but you'll see in the show why she is like that. And she adds more of a "soft sell"-dynamic rather than Grahame's hard sell.
They're all different personalities but it all shows that different personalities can still sell homes. They all have their own niche markets and their own niche way of doing things and Lara is just lovely and she makes you feel at ease, and comfortable - that's her strategy.
Grahame is just ... he's the class clown. They've all got their own unique way of selling.
Do we get glimpses of the real estate agents' personal lives or do we strictly see them professionally? Do we see them sometimes voice self-doubt or some of their down moments or challenges?
Nico Nel: For us it was important to find a nice mix between showcasing the beautiful properties, Top Billing style, and then not going soapy melodrama Selling Sunset type of thing.
We wanted to find a healthy in-between where you get glimpses of beautiful properties but also showing the real hustle of selling that. The show also introduces families that drive the agents to sell.
Even again, with Covid, these people had families at home, relying on them to make sales to put bread on the table - and now all of a sudden they might not be able to do that.
So those family stories became very important to us. Towards the end of the first season of Listing Jozi, you get to understand why certain people sell the way they do because this is their family set-up, this is why they are who they are. So it was important to show the family side of things and their personal lives so that you can understand and see the journey.
Edgar is a youngster in the industry and we follow the whole thread where he goes for further training so that he can essentially the young and strong and dynamic sales agent at the end - so there are definite journeys for each of the agents viewers get to follow in Listing Jozi.
For filming the properties, do you use specialised camera equipment and how has that evolved?
Nico Nel: When we set out to shoot this we decided that we would film it in 4K so that we have the ability to upscale and to keep selling this show for the next 10, 20 years.
For us it was easy to find the cameras to find 4K but the editing software required and the capabilities to get that 4K edited properly - especially when you're looking at an hourlong episode - was quite intricate.
For us, we were battling on the technology side of things in terms of walking around for every episode having 10 terabytes of footage you've got to work with but again we're a small team. Trevor and I are both cameramen - we shot it, we did the audio ourselves, Trevor is a qualified drone operator so he was doing all the drone shots on Listing Jozi.
We managed to keep it a small team but also punch above our weight as well and make Listing Jozi the best-looking production that we could.
What did you discover about this high-stakes, personality-driven world of real estate agents and owners that you didn't know before?
Trevor Kaplan: There are some huge houses out there - there are people who've obviously got a hell of a lot of money to spend on property.
That said, I think property prices - if you look at international property prices compared to Johannesburg, ours are a fraction of what international property prices are like.
Our market is very desirable for international people. Even people that we look at as South Africans who we think are wealthy, relative to the world, it's quite easy to buy a very big house in South Africa if you're an overseas buyer.
As far as their personalities go, I think a lot of them are very down-to-earth, they're very proud of what they've achieved in their field and careers and are quite happy to show off the fruits of their labour in their houses.
The houses were incredibly neat and tidy - almost not lived in. Some of them are so perfect. You almost don't see them as a home but as a hotel, you know. Often you wouldn't know that they are the business elite and the top people with a lot of cash flow.
Nico Nel: Yes, these are top-end business people. When you're dealing with these people with this amount of capital, they make decisions quickly.
They know what they want and that's why it is so important to follow the root that an agent takes in preparing for showings like this - they need to know their spreadsheet off the top of their mind, they need to fire so quickly because you've only got a certain amount of time you've got to sell these properties to these people and the market of agents in Johannesburg is a big market.
In order to stand out, you've got to hustle so quickly and so precisely that it makes for very interesting viewing.
Listing Jozi is on Wednesdays on BBC Lifestyle (DStv 174) at 20:00