The latest season of “Selling Sunset” dropped on Netflix on Friday, and while the series was pretty much a snooze-fest as far as the drama goes, it also revealed a somewhat sudden and drastic crisis in the housing market.
You’d be forgiven for switching off the newest “Selling Sunset” shows before the final episode. It was a pretty boring season, based on catty back and forths and pedantic miscommunications. The only parts of the storyline that really hit home were the brief but concrete concerns over selling homes in the current Los Angeles housing market.
“Selling Sunset’s” cast is based out of The Oppenheim Group, a real estate brokerage on the Sunset Strip in the dwindling twinkle of Tinseltown. On multiple occasions throughout the latest season, the group’s owners and realtors expressed concerns over the psychology of buyers and sellers in the once-booming market.
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Just a short time ago, someone putting their home up for sale in Los Angeles could almost guarantee multiple offers from buyers within a small window, sometimes as little as one day of listing. Things are far from the same. Buyers are putting a pause on purchasing new properties, and it’s hitting the brokerage hard.
Jason Oppenheim, one of the co-owners of the brokerage, said back in January that the real estate market bottoms out at the end of 2022, and it could take years to recover, according to Business Insider. The same fears were issued throughout filming.
In one scene, where all the cast gathered around in the brokerage headquarters, comments were shared about how much longer it now takes to sell something, and how prices should probably be on the lower end to accommodate for the prevailing thought that a crash could see prices plummet within the next six months.
Los Angeles’ rampant crime, lawlessness, and homeless crisis probably isn’t helping either. (RELATED: ‘Theres A Lot Of Mentally Ill People On These Streets’: Olympian Kim Glass Says She Was Brutally Attacked With Pipe By Homeless Man)
For example, Jason Oppenheim is trying to sell two $7 million penthouse listings on Hollywood Boulevard. While the properties are gorgeous, the location is not. Chrishell Straus, one of the series regulars, went so far as to note that Hollywood Boulevard is where Julia Roberts started in “Pretty Woman,” not where she concluded her story.
The local city council voted in 2022 to defund the local sheriff’s department, making it one of those places that people with real money just don’t want to go anywhere near. And the rest of Los Angeles is no different.
I’d be surprised if we see another season of “Selling Sunset” this year, and if we do, I want some honest reportage of the state of the housing market, and the real factors contributing to decline. Not just some frilly comments that get glossed over as if they don’t signal a warning to the rest of America.