Aaron Kirman
The Los Angeles market has lately become so crowded with properties asking pie-in-the-sky prices you’d think someone would make a show about it.
And now CNBC has gone and done it. The aptly named “Listing Impossible” will star high-profile agent Aaron Kirman, who has struggled to sell the most outrageously priced piece of land in the country.
CNBC says the show will follow Kirman and his team at Compass as they sell “extravagant, multi-million dollar properties.”
It may sound a little familiar — cough cough “Million Dollar Listing” — but the show does have a twist. Kirman will focus on selling properties that have “languished” on the market.
The weekly show, which is set to debut in May, comes at a time when homes in L.A. are sitting on the market longer and the housing market is slowing, including for high-end properties.
It’s unclear if Kirman will start with his own listings or if he’ll take on all new listings just for the show. One of Kirman’s properties, in particular, has proven about as impossible to sell as any: the so-called Mountain of Beverly Hills. Kirman listed the 157-acre piece of land in Beverly Hills Post Office for $1 billion last summer.
The graded-but-undeveloped property has been on and off the market for the better part of two decades and has sat more or less as-is since the late 1980s. Kirman’s listing price — the highest ever in L.A. — is seen by many as a marketing gimmick, but the buyers say they rejected a $400 million offer earlier this month from spec developer Scott Gillen.
Unlike rivals Josh Flagg or the Altman brothers, Kirman hasn’t been on “Million Dollar Listing,” but he has appeared on the CNBC show “Secret Lives of the Super Rich.”
He is no stranger to big-time deals, and has plenty of experience with celebrity clients. He’s worked with mega-stars including Jay-Z and Beyonce on a $50 million sale for a home in Malibu. Before The Mountain listing, he was best-known for selling the former Danny Thomas estate in Beverly Hills for $65 million — less than half its asking price of $135 million.
Kirman was listed fifth in transaction volume nationwide last year with $426.4 million in sales, and his team got its own office last year on Canon Drive, a few months before Pacific Union was acquired by Compass. At the time, his team numbered 44 agents and support staff.
“Listing Impossible” is part of CNBC’s new “Real Estate Thursdays” suite of shows, a push to bulk up its primetime real estate shows. It’ll join a returning show about turning around struggling developers in Chicago, a new house-flipping show with former “Bachelorette” contestants and a show where consultants “flip” a struggling small retailer. A show with Douglas Elliman agent Lisa Simonsen is also in development.
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