Samir Mezrahi posted his first outrageous house in 2020. Now he has 4 million followers and an HGTV show on the way.
“It’s what you say you would do if you’re rich,” Mezrahi says. “When you’re a kid you would say you want all these things … they went through with it and did it all.”Another genre that tends to hit is what Mezrahi dubs, “you never know what’s going on inside a home.” These posts are reserved for listings with ordinary-looking exteriors that conceal, say,
Plus, the real estate market was going haywire, with people bidding six figures over list price and packing open houses. If you didn’t have the means to buy a real house, you could at least get your kicks scrolling for fantasy digs on Zillow or Redfin, both of which experienced major traffic boosts. Mezrahi’s recounting of how he inked the HGTV show, premiering May 3, is significantly less cinematic.
Summer Anne Burton, the former head of creative at BuzzFeed, says that among those volunteer writers, Mezrahi was a star. Often, he would find whatever was trending at the top of Reddit and whip it into a post. “He was really good at it, sort of seemingly naturally,” she says.