Reality Estate
L’Agence is the new Netflix reality series about the Parisian so-awesome-you-wanna-be-adopted-by-them Kretz family, who runs a real estate agence (French for agency) out of their modest home — (a 1930s Art Deco mansion in Boulogne) — selling luxury properties to high-flyer clientele (that’s fancy France-Land talk for ‘customer’).
Dad, Olivier, and Mum, Sandrine Kretz, and their three atrocious looking adult hunks/sons — 35-year-old Martin, 34-year-old Valentin and 29-year-old Louis — on board to the agency one at a time. Son #4, 20-year-old Raphael, has now finished school and is immersed in a family that literally lives and breathes real estate. To complete the picture, Nana Majo lives two doors down from the family home/office and is a regular visitor.
Sandrine, a schoolteacher for 25 years, had the idea to get into real estate when parents of her students kept asking for help finding new apartments to fit their expanding families. From little things, big things grow — Kretz and Partners are now the go-to brokers for Paris’s elite, working mainly in the high end luxury market.
The real estate porn in this show is not for beginners. There’s a modern masterpiece accessible by boat on the Seine complete with retractable swimming pool floor (it’s for rent by the way); a 1,000 year old fully renovated Castle on 14 hectares for €15m; an ultramodern Euro duplex in the 8th arrondissement heaving with marble, 100 year old Versailles parquet floors (which they lifted and replaced to install underfloor heating) with views of the Eiffel Tower. It could be yours for €18m… I need to lie down… and a Gitanes…. just gimme a minute…
Being both a Buyer’s Agent and Francophile, all this real estate getting shoved in my eyes is my deepest, filthiest wish-list in 4k glory! But the reason I binge watched the entire 5 episodes goes back to the family.
In the first episode, Martin, Valentin and Louis take a break from work to set their grandmother up on an online dating site. “Don’t put my actual birthday, I’ll only get very old men,” says 91yo Majo. The boys lop ten years off her listed age and press submit.
The genuine love and affection they have is evident in the constant ribbing and teasing they all fling at one another. It is intoxicating. That kind of closeness is something that you rarely see on reality shows, because it’s genuine, not something thrown together by producers. It’ll make you look at your own family with deep disappointment.
It’s real estate as I’ve never seen it before. Truly unique, focused and driven. As delicious #2 son, Valentin says of their home office, “When we receive clients, they shouldn’t feel like they’re in a real estate agency where there is no soul. They come here and they feel that this is a family who is going to find a property for their family.”
I don’t know about you, but I’m walking in with Adoption Papers.
Watch this. You will regrette rien!
