Sex and Real Estate Brokerage

by Brian Brady

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Author website

Shaun Mc Lane sells real estate in Orlando. No, strike that. Today, Shaun does not sell real estate in Orlando; he will be opening his own real estate brokerage in December.

Tuesday, Shaun experimented with a racy Web 2.0 offering. He posted a video asking if sex sells. The video was a short slide show of bikini-clad women, in various poses. Should you click through, you’ll see that it isn’t “Betty Grable in a cheesecake” pose. It is a more prurient collection of photographs typically seen on MySpace.

Wednesday, Shaun’s broker laughed about it and asked him to remove the post from his website. Shaun called her bluff and was handed a pink slip. Shaun is claiming independent contractor status, because he pays his own marketing costs, and is visibly irritated with the decision. He’ll be “going it alone” which may have been his intention all along.

Similar controversy gained national attention when Wendy Heath posed with her bulldog, in a bikini, on a billboard in Long Beach, CA. Wendy’s strategy:

“I wanted to set myself apart and kind of shock the shore, and, you know, drive people to my website and increase my business,” Heath told MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough. “There’s many, many real-estate agents in our area, and it’s hard to break through and set yourself apart. … I am absolutely amazed that one billboard could cause so much attention, but I am absolutely elated.”

Competing female REALTORs dissented:

Well, as a fellow realtor, but also someone with the body to do exactly what she did, I think she took the blonde-bimbo way out. If we, as professional real-estate agents, have to result to using our scantily clad bodies to gain clients, maybe we need to look inside ourselves at what we are lacking professionally. There are many tough real-estate markets nationwide, but when we tear down the image we are struggling so hard to display (which is that every real-estate transaction benefits from the experience and knowledge that only a professional realtor can provide), we essentially lose all that we have worked to achieve. Thanks, Ms. Heath, for destroying all our credibility in one fell, ditzy swoop.

Wendy chose self-deprecation while Shaun was relying on the old Catskills comedians’ fallback, “When all else fails, tell the penis joke“. Laughing at your own imperfections (or in Wendy’ case, perfections) is considered good-natured; laughing at someone else’s is…well…unremarkable.

This isn’t about first amendment rights, broker controlled advertising content, or even taste. I’m sure that Mr. Mc Lane will succeed with Howard Stern fans and Ms. Heath will succeed with Jim Rome fans. Posting nude pictures of Paris Hilton snags hits from Gen Y. Hiring models as real estate agents may allure a wealthy sheik to a Manhattan loft.

This is about being remarkable.

Being remarkable is the goal of our UNCHAINED marketing conference. We want to show you how to create a community of sneezers. People who are wowed by your message to the point that they infect everyone around them with tributes to the remarkable that lives within your soul. We want you to show us how to change the way we connect with consumers

…and we don’t think you have to flash your boobs to be remarkable.