May 6, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/some-of-californias-sexiest-mansions-are-getting-g-rated-rebrands-11588777285

By Katherine Clarke It looks like real-estate porn. Literally. When real-estate developer Nile Niami put his $100 million Beverly Hills spec house, dubbed Opus, on the market in 2017, he commissioned a glitzy, steamy marketing video to promote it. The video features a cast of nubile young female models covered with either gold paint, gold lame, gold chain mail, or black lingerie—and not much else—undulating in various poses throughout the 20,500-square-foot, seven-bedroom mansion. One swims almost naked in the property’s courtyard pool. Another holds court in the

giant walk-in Champagne cooler, surrounded by gold-cloaked Cristal bottles. Eventually, the whole golden cast begins to writhe around a gold Lamborghini Aventador roadster with wing doors in the property’s sleek nightclub-style garage. The X-rated trailer raised eyebrows even in the sensational world of Los Angeles real estate, where agents are used to taking a “sex sells” approach to marketing high-end mansions. Some said the trailer was in poor taste and that, by positioning the house as an ultra-sexed-up bachelor pad, Mr. Niami risked alienating more conservative home shoppers, thereby limiting his buyer pool. Mr. Niami did not respond to requests for comment.

“They said, ‘let’s go with the James Bond theme, like ‘Gold Finger.’ That will go viral and get us a lot of hits,’” said Branden Williams of Hilton & Hyland, a luxury agent who wasn’t involved with the property at the time. “It was all about flash.” Nearly three years later, with the home still on the market, Mr. Williams and his wife Rayni Williams are rebranding it to lure buyers with different tastes, especially families, who have been the primary purchasers of contemporary homes in the area over the past year. And lure they must: the glut of glass-box-style L.A. homes has put downward pressure on price tags, and pandemic lockdowns have compounded the problem.

The rebranding also speaks to a general and rapid change in tastes, said Ms. Williams. The kinds of buyers who were interested in sleek, white, minimalist homes five years ago are now looking for a softer look and more organic, natural materials, she said. Paul McClean, the architect who designed the house, agreed. “Every second person now is asking for travertine and oak,” he said recently of the general design trends in L.A. Many of the recent blockbuster deals in Los Angeles have also been for historic homes with pedigree, rather than newly built glass boxes. Among the most expensive homes to have sold in the past couple of years are the Spelling Mansion, which sold for just shy of $120 million, and the Chartwell estate, which sold for $150 million. Both homes couldn't be further from contemporary in terms of design. In the case of Opus, which was renamed “1175 Billionaires’ Row,” a reference to the stream of high-net-worth owners on the street, including David Geffen and Twinkies heir Evan Metropoulos, the rebranding also follows a change in ownership. Mr. Niami lost control of Opus earlier this year; Joseph Englanoff, a lender on Mr. Niami’s portfolio, took the reins. The house will be relisted for $58 million, just shy of the $59.995 million Mr. Niami was asking before the transfer in February.

Among the family-friendly changes being made to the property, Mr. Englanoff agreed with the Williams team’s plan to rip out the dark stone floors in favor of wide plank oak. The Cristal fridge was turned into an organic pantry, Hermès place settings were removed and gold accents stripped out. The Lamborghini was replaced with a family-friendly Porsche Macan and a new listing video is being filmed featuring the Williams’s children playing in the garden. The cost of the changes was close to $2 million. Sprucing up a home for the market is nothing new. But the branding efforts that go into selling ultrahigh-end homes have escalated over the past few years, as developers vie for attention in extremely competitive markets like New York, L.A. and San Francisco. The pricier the home, the more money that goes into creating an elaborate identity for it: The builder gives it a distinctive name like “Billionaire” or “The One,” shoots a high-quality marketing video and throws in all kinds of extras, like cars, a helicopter or valuable art, to entice buyers. The Williamses said they believe the investment in rebranding is well worth it, since buyers in this price category want to see the finished product. Fredrik Eklund, star of the reality TV show “Million Dollar

Listing New York” and an agent with Douglas Elliman, tried a similar strategy when he took over a listing for a Beverly Hills mansion earlier this year and priced it at $32 million. The sleek contemporary, which looked more like a nightclub than a family home in prior listing pictures, had been on and off the market since 2016, according to Zillow. But, with a major park located just across the street and a sizable backyard, Mr. Eklund thought it would appeal more to a family with young children.

Aside from reshooting the property during daylight hours, Mr. Eklund and his fellow listing agent, Ben Bacal of Revel Real Estate, shot an elaborate video trailer based on “Star Wars.” In the video, Mr. Eklund is seen dressed as Princess Leia, while Mr. Bacal dressed as Darth Vader. The pair spar with toy lightsabers in the yard while roughly 12 young children, including Mr. Eklund’s own son and daughter, play around them. The video was designed to show the property as child-friendly, Mr. Eklund said. “We wanted to get the eyeballs of parents—wealthy parents,” he said. “And we wanted brokers who’d looked at the property before to see it in a new way.”

Mr. Eklund said he got an offer for the property from a family who saw the video, but the price was too low. In some cases, instead of doubling down on one distinct strategy, developers have tried to be all things to all buyers, creating and marketing various home identities all at once.

While marketing a $45 million mansion in Francisco last year, the marketing team for developer Troon Pacific positioned the home simultaneously for dog lovers, the health conscious, the elderly, avid gardeners and the anxious. They touted shades in the bedrooms that they said would transform harsh light into soft light that would aid with sleep, shielded cables that would help protect the owner from damaging electromagnetic signals, and a hospital-grade air filtration system that could fix a runny nose and clogged sinuses.

For the anniversary of the Woodstock music festival, they pushed the property’s “flower power.” And when the AARP released statistics showing that 20% of the U.S. population will be aged 65 and older by the year 2050, the house was suddenly a high-end nursing home, with au pair suites that could be used as a living space for at-home caregivers. A state-of-the-art canine washing station made it a paradise for dogs, they said.

“That’s part of our job,” said Vanessa Morin, a senior vice president at Quinn PR, the public relations firm handling Troon. “It’s our job to make sure that we’re keeping them relevant.” The house sold for $27 million in March, but some experts said it is possible to push too hard.

“At the end of the day, it’s just a house and a buyer will either like it or they won’t,” said Andy Butler of Garde Media, a real-estate marketing consultant who wasn’t involved with any of these projects. He said that pushing too many angles can make sellers look desperate. It can also confuse consumers, he said. “The perception is that they’re pushing to keep reinventing the property and make it look fresh, but it can look irrational,” Mr. Butler said. “It’s like, if you’re buying a $40 million house, you can already afford to build the most high-tech, souped-up dog washing station in the world. For the equivalent of the price of a Snickers bar. That’s not going to sell the house.”