YouTubers Are Lifting The Veil on America’s Most Expensive Homes

Enes Yilmazer has toured some of the most expensive homes in the world. He’s explored penthouses on New York’s Billionaires’ Row, palatial beach houses in Malibu, Calif., and waterfront mansions on Lake Tahoe. He has oohed and aahed over Central Park views, marble floors, infinity pools, retractable roofs and candy walls and had a front row seat to an explosion of eight- and nine-figure real-estate listings across the country.

Mr. Yilmazer, 31, isn’t a wealthy buyer, nor is he currently a real-estate agent. Rather, he is one of a handful of real-estate YouTubers, amateur video hosts and producers, who are bringing regular people, via their laptops or cell phones, inside the mansions of the megarich. With more than 820,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel, Mr. Yilmazer’s videos rack up millions of views and inspire tens of thousands of comments.

“Imagine forgetting something on your way out and having to go back and walk 5-6 business days to get it,” wrote one incredulous commenter on Mr. Yilmazer’s recent video about a sprawling $38 million estate in the pricey Calabasas area of Los Angeles. “How many people would it take to clean this place!!” said another about a $50 million Bel Air chateau.

In some ways, real-estate YouTubers like Mr. Yilmazer are providing today’s answer to the MTV Cribs phenomenon of the early 2000s, offering the masses a rare glimpse at how the 0.1% really live. But rather than getting a peak through the eyes of a movie star or a suave celebrity real-estate agent, like on shows such as Bravo’s “Million Dollar Listing,” they’re seeing these houses through the eyes of a regular guy just like them.

Two years ago, Mr. Yilmazer and his longtime friend Michael Ayers started the channel with just a handheld camera, filming any house a high-end real-estate agent would let them into, he said.

Now, as they grow more sophisticated with their production, YouTubers like Mr. Yilmazer are shaking up how high-end real estate is sold in cities like Los Angeles, New York and Miami. They are making YouTube, the Google-owned video website, an increasingly important marketing channel for even the most privacy-obsessed homesellers and their real-estate agents. That’s been particularly evident over the past year as the Covid pandemic reduced the number of buyers willing to tour homes in person.

“Since Covid, people aren’t out and about the same way,” said Samantha Sax, chief marketing officer of Pontiac Land US, one of the developers of 53 West 53, a luxury skyscraper on New York’s Billionaires’ Row that Mr. Yilmazer recently featured on his channel. “They want to see things from their phone and computer more than they ever have before.”

The success of these real-estate channels has led to a rush of new copycat channels, some of which merge real-estate content with videos about designer cars, watches and get-rich schemes. It’s also spurred a boom in the number of agents trying to create their own video content, which can be hit or miss.

While some agents, like Ryan Serhant of “Million Dollar Listing New York,” have quickly become YouTube stars thanks in part to their television fame and big personalities, not all big-ticket agents were created with a lights-camera-action personality. Many come off as stiff and overly salesy to a YouTube audience, Mr. Yilmazer said. His own style is laid back and informational as he methodically walks viewers through all the features of each house.

Mr. Serhant said he tries to help members of his own team at his firm Serhant to be more natural on screen, with improv classes and on-camera training.

“There’s no specific personality that works well in front of the camera but you have to have one,” he said.

As the real-estate YouTube space becomes increasingly popular, these YouTubers are lining their pockets.

Mr. Yilmazer said he is bringing in between $50,000 and $100,000 a month in revenue from his YouTube channel in ad revenue alone, putting him on track to bring in more than $1 million this year if the growth of his channel continues at its current pace. Those are just the revenues provided by YouTube for allowing their automated ads to stream on the channel without any effort from Mr. Yilmazer’s own small team. On top of that, he and his team can make money from dedicated sponsorships—Mr. Yilmazer will personally feature a particular company’s brand in his videos for a fee that runs in the tens of thousands of dollars— and the money real-estate agents offer him to feature their listings on his channel. He said he often won’t charge if a property is particularly spectacular and will drive viewership to his channel. If a property is less impressive, he charges a fee, which typically runs into the five figures.

Mr. Yilmazer said he pays three videographers to shoot with him and production can run him between $5,000 and $15,000 per video. There are other expenses, too. He has invested around $25,000 in a drone set up, for instance.

Erik Conover, 31, a competing real-estate YouTuber with nearly 1.6 million subscribers on his channel, said he typically charges a rate in the tens of thousands of dollars to feature a company’s brand in his videos in what he calls a “45- to 50-second integration.” When he chooses to charge an agent to feature their property, it can cost them in the low five figures. He said he typically brings in between $10,000 and $30,000 a month in revenue from ads provided by YouTube.

He said that his audience, 25- to 35-years-olds in big cities around the world, is desirable to advertisers, but he believes his videos also drum up potential buyers for the luxurious homes he has featured on the channel. Sometimes, they refer videos to their wealthy parents, he said.

Still, not everyone is sold on letting YouTubers have free rein in their properties, since some agents believe that prospective buyers would prefer that their future homes not be splashed all over the internet.

“A lot of sellers at a very high level want to maintain some semblance of privacy,” said Alexander Ali, founder of the Society Group, a real-estate public relations firm that advises agents across the country. “Our buyers would not necessarily want everyone seeing their bedrooms and the overall layout of the home from a security perspective. You have to hold stuff back.”

Sometimes sellers don’t appreciate their homes being used as bait for advertisers, especially when those advertisers don’t reflect the kind of high-culture vibes they’re trying to give off. One marketing professional said he had an agent complain about allowing a YouTuber film in his trophy New York apartment, only to see images of the opulent apartment juxtaposed against crude advertisements for a company specializing in “manscaping” in the resulting video.

Skeptics also question whether YouTube videos actually sell these homes, since most of the viewers are watching voyeuristically and can’t personally afford the properties. Mr. Covonver and Mr. Yilmazer admit it’s likely that only a very small percentage of their viewership has the necessary net worth to purchase. But Mr. Conover said those viewers do exist, citing first-hand experience. Once, while running on a treadmill at his local Equinox gym, he had a stranger approach him about a video he had filmed in a penthouse at Walker Tower, an Art Deco building in New York’s Chelsea neighbourhood.

“He said, ‘You know I purchased an apartment in that building based on your tour,’ ” Mr. Conover recalled, noting that the apartment the man bought was priced around $25 million. “That was the moment where I was like, ‘Okay, this is very real.’ ”

Both Mr. Yilmazer and Mr. Conover are entirely self taught in videography, editing and filmmaking and their videos started out rocky.

Mr. Yilmazer, who is originally from Turkey, was a professional windsurfer with a scholarship at Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi before investing in house flipping with the proceeds of his surfing sponsorships. When he moved to Los Angeles in 2018, spurred by a dream, fueled by reality shows on Bravo, of “palm trees, nice cars and beautiful hillside homes,” he got his real-estate license. His career as a broker never really took off. Instead, as he was touring other agents’ trophy listings at open houses, he thought about how much others would love to see inside these extravagant properties. The idea for a YouTube channel was born.

“I was going to brokers’ open houses and seeing all these incredible homes,” he said. “I’m like, ‘This is crazy. I’m in a city where literally the rest of the world aspires to come to and I’m touring $200 million worth of real estate on a regular Tuesday. There’s something here. Why is no one is making any kind of a YouTube channel out of this?’ ”

He quickly called his friend Mr. Ayers and asked him to move to L.A., where the two of them began attending the open houses together, with a GoPro in hand, and asking agents to let them film. Initially, Mr. Yilmazer thought the channel might drive would-be buyers to use his services as an agent.

It took months for the channel to build momentum and generate revenue, but soon it grabbed his focus from actually selling real estate, he said. Mr. Ayers slept on his couch during the early days of the project. Over time, the videos evolved to be more professional. Mr. Yilmazer got more informed about each house and dedicated whole videos to just one property rather than showcasing a hodgepodge of houses around town in each episode. He also made videos longer form, since he said the YouTube algorithm favors longer-form content and increases his chances of being featured on viewers’ home screens.

Mr. Conover, who still edits all his videos, said he remains wowed by most of the houses he sees. A graduate of Northeastern University in Boston, he discovered YouTube after doing a bunch of odd jobs in New York, such as manager at Abercrombie & Fitch, fitness instructor, and lifeguard at the Gansevoort Hotel pool.

“I don’t come from wealth. I grew up in a 900-square-foot two-bedroom house in a town called Absecon, N.J., so for me every time I step into a property like that, it’s surreal,” he said. “I was essentially broke when I started my YouTube channel and I was filming it on an iPhone editing with iMovie.”

His situation has changed dramatically. He recently allowed his viewers in on his personal search for a home, scoping out apartments in Soho and Tribeca priced at as much as $10,000 a month.

Mr. Conover said he doesn’t think it would be possible for newcomers to replicate his success now that the business has matured, unless they had a unique idea. “You need high-quality cameras and proper editing,” he said.

YouTubers also have to tread carefully when it comes to biting the hand that feeds them luxury homes to film. Mr. Conover was having so much success with his channel over the past year that he was approached by a New York real-estate firm Nest Seekers International, which wanted him to get his real-estate license and become an agent. At the time, Mr. Serhant, the “Million Dollar Listing New York” star, had moved on from Nest Seekers to start his own company and the brokerage sought an agent who could replicate his YouTube following.

“We wanted to remain active in that space,” said Eddie Shapiro, the chief executive of Nest Seekers, who said he wants his firm to be on top of the online trends. “It’s all about being progressive. It’s like, are people buying $100 million homes on TikTok? I don’t know that yet but I don’t want to miss that boat if it comes.”

Now that he is an agent on the side, Mr. Conover said a small number of New York agents don’t want him to film their listings—they view him as competition. He said he doesn’t mind so much since he thinks there are plenty of exciting properties for him to feature elsewhere. For those agents he is working with in New York, he assures them that he’s a YouTuber first and an agent second.

Mr. Yilmazer recently gave up his license because he felt it was limiting the access he could get to the biggest listings. He said he believes the ceiling on his YouTube career is higher. “If you have a listing on the best sites like Redfin, Zillow at best maybe you get 30,000 or 40,000 clicks,” he said. “We’re getting two to three million people to click on our videos and I believe we can scale that to 10 times bigger than what it is right now. That is, to me, that’s incredible.”

PARIS —Paris has long been a byword for luxurious living. The traditional components of the upscale home, from parquet floors to elaborate moldings, have their origins here. Yet settling down in just the right address in this low-rise, high-density city may be the greatest luxury of all.

Tradition reigns supreme in Paris real estate, where certain conditions seem set in stone—the western half of the city, on either side of the Seine, has long been more expensive than the east. But in the fashion world’s capital, parts of the housing market are also subject to shifting fads. In the trendy, hilly northeast, a roving cool factor can send prices in this year’s hip neighborhood rising, while last year’s might seem like a sudden bargain.

This week, with the opening of the Olympic Games and the eyes of the world turned toward Paris, The Wall Street Journal looks at the most expensive and desirable areas in the City of Light.

The Most Expensive Arrondissement: the 6th

Known for historic architecture, elegant apartment houses and bohemian street cred, the 6th Arrondissement is Paris’s answer to Manhattan’s West Village. Like its New York counterpart, the 6th’s starving-artist days are long behind it. But the charm that first wooed notable residents like Gertrude Stein and Jean-Paul Sartre is still largely intact, attracting high-minded tourists and deep-pocketed homeowners who can afford its once-edgy, now serene atmosphere.

Le Breton George V Notaires, a Paris notary with an international clientele, says the 6th consistently holds the title of most expensive arrondissement among Paris’s 20 administrative districts, and 2023 was no exception. Last year, average home prices reached $1,428 a square foot—almost 30% higher than the Paris average of $1,100 a square foot.

According to Meilleurs Agents, the Paris real estate appraisal company, the 6th is also home to three of the city’s five most expensive streets. Rue de Furstemberg, a secluded loop between Boulevard Saint-Germain and the Seine, comes in on top, with average prices of $2,454 a square foot as of March 2024.

For more than two decades, Kyle Branum, a 51-year-old attorney, and Kimberly Branum, a 60-year-old retired CEO, have been regular visitors to Paris, opting for apartment rentals and ultimately an ownership interest in an apartment in the city’s 7th Arrondissement, a sedate Left Bank district known for its discreet atmosphere and plutocratic residents.

“The 7th was the only place we stayed,” says Kimberly, “but we spent most of our time in the 6th.”

In 2022, inspired by the strength of the dollar, the Branums decided to fulfil a longstanding dream of buying in Paris. Working with Paris Property Group, they opted for a 1,465-square-foot, three-bedroom in a building dating to the 17th century on a side street in the 6th Arrondissement. They paid $2.7 million for the unit and then spent just over $1 million on the renovation, working with Franco-American visual artist Monte Laster, who also does interiors.

The couple, who live in Santa Barbara, Calif., plan to spend about three months a year in Paris, hosting children and grandchildren, and cooking after forays to local food markets. Their new kitchen, which includes a French stove from luxury appliance brand Lacanche, is Kimberly’s favourite room, she says.

Another American, investor Ashley Maddox, 49, is also considering relocating.

In 2012, the longtime Paris resident bought a dingy, overstuffed 1,765-square-foot apartment in the 6th and started from scratch. She paid $2.5 million and undertook a gut renovation and building improvements for about $800,000. A centrepiece of the home now is the one-time salon, which was turned into an open-plan kitchen and dining area where Maddox and her three children tend to hang out, American-style. Just outside her door are some of the city’s best-known bakeries and cheesemongers, and she is a short walk from the Jardin du Luxembourg, the Left Bank’s premier green space.

“A lot of the majesty of the city is accessible from here,” she says. “It’s so central, it’s bananas.” Now that two of her children are going away to school, she has listed the four-bedroom apartment with Varenne for $5 million.

The Most Expensive Neighbourhoods: Notre-Dame and Invalides

Garrow Kedigian is moving up in the world of Parisian real estate by heading south of the Seine.

During the pandemic, the Canada-born, New York-based interior designer reassessed his life, he says, and decided “I’m not going to wait any longer to have a pied-à-terre in Paris.”

He originally selected a 1,130-square-foot one-bedroom in the trendy 9th Arrondissement, an up-and-coming Right Bank district just below Montmartre. But he soon realised it was too small for his extended stays, not to mention hosting guests from out of town.

After paying about $1.6 million in 2022 and then investing about $55,000 in new decor, he put the unit up for sale in early 2024 and went house-shopping a second time. He ended up in the Invalides quarter of the 7th Arrondissement in the shadow of one Paris’s signature monuments, the golden-domed Hôtel des Invalides, which dates to the 17th century and is fronted by a grand esplanade.

His new neighbourhood vies for Paris’s most expensive with the Notre-Dame quarter in the 4th Arrondissement, centred on a few islands in the Seine behind its namesake cathedral. According to Le Breton, home prices in the Notre-Dame neighbourhood were $1,818 a square foot in 2023, followed by $1,568 a square foot in Invalides.

After breaking even on his Right Bank one-bedroom, Kedigian paid $2.4 million for his new 1,450-square-foot two-bedroom in a late 19th-century building. It has southern exposures, rounded living-room windows and “gorgeous floors,” he says. Kedigian, who bought the new flat through Junot Fine Properties/Knight Frank, plans to spend up to $435,000 on a renovation that will involve restoring the original 12-foot ceiling height in many of the rooms, as well as rescuing the ceilings’ elaborate stucco detailing. He expects to finish in 2025.

Over in the Notre-Dame neighbourhood, Belles demeures de France/Christie’s recently sold a 2,370-square-foot, four-bedroom home for close to the asking price of about $8.6 million, or about $3,630 a square foot. Listing agent Marie-Hélène Lundgreen says this places the unit near the very top of Paris luxury real estate, where prime homes typically sell between $2,530 and $4,040 a square foot.

The Most Expensive Suburb: Neuilly-sur-Seine

The Boulevard Périphérique, the 22-mile ring road that surrounds Paris and its 20 arrondissements, was once a line in the sand for Parisians, who regarded the French capital’s numerous suburbs as something to drive through on their way to and from vacation. The past few decades have seen waves of gentrification beyond the city’s borders, upgrading humble or industrial districts to the north and east into prime residential areas. And it has turned Neuilly-sur-Seine, just northwest of the city, into a luxury compound of first resort.

In 2023, Neuilly’s average home price of $1,092 a square foot made the leafy, stately community Paris’s most expensive suburb.

Longtime residents, Alain and Michèle Bigio, decided this year is the right time to list their 7,730-square-foot, four-bedroom townhouse on a gated Neuilly street.

The couple, now in their mid 70s, completed the home in 1990, two years after they purchased a small parcel of garden from the owners next door for an undisclosed amount. Having relocated from a white-marble château outside Paris, the couple echoed their previous home by using white- and cream-coloured stone in the new four-story build. The Bigios, who will relocate just back over the border in the 16th Arrondissement, have listed the property with Emile Garcin Propriétés for $14.7 million.

The couple raised two adult children here and undertook upgrades in their empty-nester years—most recently, an indoor pool in the basement and a new elevator.

The cool, pale interiors give way to dark and sardonic images in the former staff’s quarters in the basement where Alain works on his hobby—surreal and satirical paintings, whose risqué content means that his wife prefers they stay downstairs. “I’m not a painter,” he says. “But I paint.”

The Trendiest Arrondissement: the 9th

French interior designer Julie Hamon is theatre royalty. Her grandfather was playwright Jean Anouilh, a giant of 20th-century French literature, and her sister is actress Gwendoline Hamon. The 52-year-old, who divides her time between Paris and the U.K., still remembers when the city’s 9th Arrondissement, where she and her husband bought their 1,885-square-foot duplex in 2017, was a place to have fun rather than put down roots. Now, the 9th is the place to do both.

The 9th, a largely 19th-century district, is Paris at its most urban. But what it lacks in parks and other green spaces, it makes up with nightlife and a bustling street life. Among Paris’s gentrifying districts, which have been transformed since 2000 from near-slums to the brink of luxury, the 9th has emerged as the clear winner. According to Le Breton, average 2023 home prices here were $1,062 a square foot, while its nearest competitors for the cool crown, the 10th and the 11th, have yet to break $1,011 a square foot.

A co-principal in the Bobo Design Studio, Hamon—whose gut renovation includes a dramatic skylight, a home cinema and air conditioning—still seems surprised at how far her arrondissement has come. “The 9th used to be well known for all the theatres, nightclubs and strip clubs,” she says. “But it was never a place where you wanted to live—now it’s the place to be.”

With their youngest child about to go to college, she and her husband, 52-year-old entrepreneur Guillaume Clignet, decided to list their Paris home for $3.45 million and live in London full-time. Propriétés Parisiennes/Sotheby’s is handling the listing, which has just gone into contract after about six months on the market.

The 9th’s music venues were a draw for 44-year-old American musician and piano dealer, Ronen Segev, who divides his time between Miami and a 1,725-square-foot, two-bedroom in the lower reaches of the arrondissement. Aided by Paris Property Group, Segev purchased the apartment at auction during the pandemic, sight unseen, for $1.69 million. He spent $270,000 on a renovation, knocking down a wall to make a larger salon suitable for home concerts.

During the Olympics, Segev is renting out the space for about $22,850 a week to attendees of the Games. Otherwise, he prefers longer-term sublets to visiting musicians for $32,700 a month.

Most Exclusive Address: Avenue Junot

Hidden in the hilly expanses of the 18th Arrondissement lies a legendary street that, for those in the know, is the city’s most exclusive address. Avenue Junot, a bucolic tree-lined lane, is a fairy-tale version of the city, separate from the gritty bustle that surrounds it.

Homes here rarely come up for sale, and, when they do, they tend to be off-market, or sold before they can be listed. Martine Kuperfis—whose Paris-based Junot Group real-estate company is named for the street—says the most expensive units here are penthouses with views over the whole of the city.

In 2021, her agency sold a 3,230-square-foot triplex apartment, with a 1,400-square-foot terrace, for $8.5 million. At about $2,630 a square foot, that is three times the current average price in the whole of the 18th.

Among its current Junot listings is a 1930s 1,220-square-foot townhouse on the avenue’s cobblestone extension, with an asking price of $2.8 million.