I can never walk past an oyster,” says Palm Beach real estate agent Billy Nash. He has just slurped down two on the street outside Broadway Market’s Fin and Flounder where he has come to get a feel for one of London’s biggest property boom zones. Despite having eschewed his usual Florida-friendly look — think blazers, pocket squares and pink shirts — in favour of a black T-shirt, khaki chinos and sneakers, Nash is still something of a fish out of water here. His clothes are a little too box fresh, his teeth too gleamingly American for hipster Hackney.
Luckily, Nash is here with a native guide, Sunny Williams, the founder of Hackney-based fashion brand House of Sunny. He is producing, and presenting, a new property TV programme, Passport Properties, and is visiting London for one of the episodes in the first series.
“I love London,” he says. “There’s so much beautiful real estate — all these small sections of London that used to be villages. When I started to plan the show, I knew that London would 100 per cent be on the radar for an episode.” The intention is to stray away from well-trodden, super-prime Knightsbridge and Mayfair, and to give viewers a taste of what living in London might actually look like. “It’s not about blowing people away with the lifestyles of the rich and famous, or ‘look what I have and you don’t’,” says Nash. “It’s hearing people’s stories — how did they end up here? What makes this place tick for them? What would it be like to live here?”
Not everyone on Broadway Market is on board. A small crowd has gathered around Nash and his crew. Some are curious about the programme, some want to get past (“for God’s sake, not today,” says one man) and some are just waiting to buy their fresh fish. A drunken man watches, flicking pieces of stale croissant onto the ground (the decision is made not to include him in the shot).
Property and TV star Billy Nash, right, with House of Sunny founder Sunny Williams
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Unfazed, Nash gets stuck into a chat with the two fishmongers in their yellow aprons and wellies gamely telling him about how the oysters are grown in Maldon in Essex. “I think that’s what makes this area so special: you have multiple mom-and-pop shops that have been here for years, serving the community. You’ve got the oyster king right here,” he gestures to the fishmonger, and then to Williams. “And the fashion king right here.”
Earlier today, they were filming at Williams’s newly renovated Camden mews house; yesterday, they visited a warehouse conversion near Vauxhall. Tomorrow is an £11 million home in Belgravia. The cultural life of the city is also up for exploration with a visit to Richard Young’s gallery, dinner at Sune in Hackney and even a good old-fashioned east London boozer.
Sunny Williams’s newly-renovated Camden mews home
Ian Tillotson
With Passport Properties, the underlying hope for Nash is that it will advertise European property and lifestyle to American buyers — and steer them towards him as an agent. Last year, US buyers accounted for 9.3 per cent of all sales in prime central London, according to Knight Frank, making them the biggest group of overseas buyers. “If you’re thinking about buying a second home somewhere around the world and you watch this show, it will help educate you on the process.”
Wall Street to Palm Beach
Nash himself had a modest upbringing in New Jersey, before working as a trader on Wall Street for 22 years. He was at Bear Stearns during the 2008 financial crash; after its collapse, he moved into the world of luxury real estate. He has been a broker with the Palm Beach-based firm Keyes-Forbes Global Properties for the past decade, selling trophy homes in the US and abroad.
Passport Properties is his second foray into property TV. In 2018, he hosted season three of Selling Mega Mansions, which is set in the Palm Beaches. He also has a podcast, Luxury Real Estate with Billy Nash. Both, he says, have led to lucrative new clients. He still gets enquiries from Selling Mega Mansions seven years on; one Californian woman who wanted to buy in the area has now completed three transactions with him, worth $30 million (£22.1m).
For agents, particularly at a super-prime level, TV appearances offer exposure, clients and sales. For estate agent Joshua Marks, for example, who is selling an £80 million Knightsbridge penthouse which features on Channel 4’s Britain’s Most Expensive Houses, the motivation to appear on the programme was simple: “We thought that it would be good publicity.” Likewise, within a month of starring in Buying London, DDRE Global founder Daniel Daggers says that the company’s daily enquiries jumped fivefold, website views hit 1.8 million and “inbound leads” topped £400 million. “No one trusts strangers. Netflix allowed us to be a familiar brand to millions of people,” he says.
This show isn’t about drama. There are no purple Lamborghinis. It’s authentic and these are real stories
Billy Nash
But Nash is adamant that Passport Properties is not another drama-filled Selling Sunset or Buying London. “It’s fake, right? Everybody is wearing costumes — I would never walk into a property with somebody dressed like that. It’s not how this business works. I think those shows give a bad name to the real estate industry. That motivated me to show the real side of real estate.
“This show isn’t about any kind of drama. It’s not about commissions. There are no purple Lamborghinis. We’re the opposite of those shows,” he continues. “It’s authentic, and these are real stories. There’s no script.”
Billy Nash with photographer Richard Young at his gallery
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Passport Properties has the same sound and music team as Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown. This has invited comparison — something that Nash seems to simultaneously welcome and refute. “I’m not trying to emulate Anthony Bourdain, because he was a genius,” he says. “The ultimate goal is that if he were still here today and he watched Passport Properties, he would say: ‘Nash is cool, I want to grab a beer with him.’ And maybe a shot of whisky.”
Beyond London, Nash will travel to Croatia, France, Italy, Portugal and Spain, fusing travel, food, culture and history with property. Nash has chosen these locations and properties himself. Partly, this is because they are hotspots for Americans buying second homes in Europe. “It’s also for the dreamer, right?” he says. “This is cinematic. It’s beautiful. It tells a story. It showcases incredible real estate. But it really captures the soul and the community — what’s beyond the walls of a property.”
In the footsteps of Mona Lisa
The line-up includes a 700-year-old villa outside Florence which was home to the real-life Mona Lisa, and a 14th-century monastery where its owners discovered beautiful frescoes hidden beneath the walls.
The 700-year-old villa outside Florence which was home to the real-life Mona Lisa
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There’s former NBA player Tony Parker’s chateau near Avignon, which was once the Pope’s guesthouse and features a secret underground tunnel leading to the Palais de Papes.
And in Ronda, Spain, Nash visited the family home of the Ordóñez bullfighting dynasty, where Hemingway came to write and where his typewriter is displayed on the wall. The actor and filmmaker Orson Welles’s ashes are scattered outside. What does Nash take from it all? “The world is smaller than we think. You don’t need to speak the same language to feel at home. That’s the sense of community that I feel when I visit properties.”
Next week, Nash is off to Scotland. After that, Split, Dubrovnik, Puglia and Sardinia await. Passport Properties will premiere in October at entertainment festival MIPCOM Cannes, with network and global distribution to be revealed afterwards. Nash is already eyeing up season two. “There’s so many places to explore,” he says. “England’s huge. I want to come back and do the Cotswolds, do York, do Wales. The storylines are endless.”