With so much income generated by and for the courtiers, hangers-on and purveyors in proximity to the Imperial Capital* it is no wonder that real estate is a topic of endless discussion.
And then there's this guy.
From Washingtonian, April 9, 2021:
One might imagine that sitting in Daniel Heider’s Georgetown office is what it’s like to be held by Gwyneth Paltrow: The whole place feels expensive and quiet and serene, as if it’s been wrapped away in cashmere from the outside world. Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams chandeliers hang overhead, Ralph Lauren coffee-table books are artfully strewn about, and a fleet of Diptyque candles flicker. Heider sits at one end of a long white table, and at the other sits a tiered cake plate full of Ladurée macarons emblazoned with the Heider insignia.
The 33-year-old real-estate agent picks up his iPhone, which is snuggled in a green alligator case (the gold monogram matches his signet ring and Rolex), and starts to scroll through some of his TikToks. Heider’s group, which operates under TTR Sotheby’s, has 2.5 million followers and posts money shots of over-the-top multimillion-dollar homes, the kind you’d see on Selling Sunset or Million Dollar Listing—more LA than Beltway.
Heider emits a kind of paternal pride while he flips through the TikToks, as if gazing at a pen of very expensive, meticulously groomed pet chinchillas that he’s raised from birth. In one, the camera zooms past a bright-red Ferrari parked in front of Mike Tyson’s former Bethesda estate while a Rico Nasty song plays. In another, a model steps out of a Land Rover Defender and strolls toward a $2.7-million Capitol Hill home while swinging a Gucci bag. His most viewed TikTok has 22.3 million hits and follows another model as she exits a swarm of black Cadillacs and walks through a $7-million French-château-style behemoth in Great Falls. To put it bluntly: In the world of mansion porn, Heider is like the editor of Playboy.
It’s an insane moment for agents like Heider, and a bonkers time for Washington real estate at large, with low interest rates and pandemic claustrophobia propelling bidding wars and selling sprees. Before Covid, Heider’s team already ranked among the area’s top in sales volume, with more than $80 million in deals for 2019. Last year, they nearly doubled their business, notching $150 million-plus in sales, the most for TTR Sotheby’s.
But Heider’s crowd is not simply the pair of well-paid DC lawyers looking to trade up from their glassy Logan Circle condo. His universe is also the land of astronomical budgets supersized for home theaters and bespoke basketball courts and pools decorated with something called “fire bowls.” At a standard 3-percent commission—before expenses and the cuts for his brokerage and his team—that’s $300,000 on a $10-million home. Which is to say that compared with the typical DC millennial (average annual salary: $47,734), Heider is probably doing more than okay.
When we meet, he has just returned from recharging for 2021 with a 14-day stay at the Faena Hotel in Miami. (Heider is a suite-facing-the-ocean kinda guy.) A month or so before, he spent New Year’s Eve at the Inn at Little Washington, where he Instagrammed a photo of his English Cream golden retriever, Buck, wearing a bow tie and sniffing a spoonful of caviar. Vintage pics—i.e., pre-2020—show him lounging in an Emirates first-class cabin, learning to make a cappuccino with Martha Stewart in the Hamptons, and offering a top-shelf view at the Four Seasons in Athens (“the very first time I can recall ever needing to wear a sweater in Greece,” the caption reads).
No, subtlety is not Heider’s strong suit, but that’s also kind of the point. He frequently partners with Lamborghini or Ferrari dealerships for his videos and places a $1,500 scent diffuser at his listings (“London Calling,” from Aroma 360). He often works with a former Marine to film his listings via drone (a Marine who knows how to secure permission to fly in Washington’s flight-restricted zone, mind you). And last fall, he threw a bougie pumpkin-patch party to sell a $3.95-million Potomac estate.
This is all unusual, to say the least. Sure, there are other local agents on TikTok, but with smaller audiences (and no Lamborghinis). Washington is a city where the luxury clientele often includes politically adjacent names who would die if their home were all over the internet, let alone filmed by a drone and set against a Megan Thee Stallion song. But Heider—to the consternation of some critics—sees the norm-breaking as a plus (even if TikTok has generated only a couple of clients so far). For his team’s Blue Steel–like headshots, Heider purposely wore a turtleneck because he didn’t want to look like every other DC agent “in a navy suit with a tie and a white shirt and, like, a mahogany background.”....
....MUCH MORE
*Highest income counties in the United States:
1. Loudoun County, Virginia — $140,382
2. Falls Church City, Virginia — $137,551 (independent city without a county)
7. Fairfax County, Virginia — $122,035
8. Arlington County, Virginia — $120,950
11. Howard County, Maryland — $116,719
17. Stafford County, Virginia — $108,421
18. Montgomery County, Maryland — $107,758
19. Calverty County, Virginia — $106,270
20. Prince William County, Virginia — $106,200
Nine of the top twenty highest income counties in the country surround D.C.
