Opinion: Love it or loathe it, I can’t stop watching

If we ever needed further proof that Sydney is now cemented as a fully-fledged member of the most extraordinary properties in the world club, then Luxe Listings is it. 

It’s true that people don’t often want to see how the sausage is made; this show though, with its slick and shiny production and the most dizzying drone shots that would not be out of place in a tourism campaign, make it hard to look away. As rockstar agent D’Leanne Lewis purrs, ‘My job is to help [buyers] overpay, sweetheart.’ Telling it like it is.

There’s more pimped up luxury property than you can poke a stick at, and everything is bespoke – ‘You say bespoke, I say crazy,’ chortles buyer’s agent Simon Cohen. There are cheese rooms, marinas and golf greens. Luxe Listings might be the most unrealistic property ‘reality’ show ever created, but I love it. 

Not only do I want to peer further into all those houses, it even leaves me wanting to do a job swap and become an agent; zipping about town in the latest luxe car, swishing in and out of the office, sun-sparkling lunches on the harbour, tick-tacking on the phone with clients who have ‘very deep pockets… endless in fact’ and then strutting through immaculately styled houses sewn into cliff tops. Sign me up!

Escaping to see how the other half lives is a sort-of balm for me. And I’ll admit to loving it even more when it’s peppered with mind-bending architecture, sass and snappiness and some madly eccentric characters with inflated egos thrown in for good measure.

There’s no modesty here and the idea of being understated actually seems rather rude. Those houses with their jaw-droppingly gorgeous views have more Carrara marble than could possibly be found in Italy, as well as elevators, infinity pools and enough priceless art to make New York’s Met Museum feel underweight.

And the ultimate irony is, in this lofty stretch from reality (well, at least from mine!), we don’t even know if and who buys the house for the most part. But for once, nobody actually seems to care.