Fredrik Eklund Does Dallas, Loves Him Some Dallas, Got Plenty of Dallas Last Night!

You know him as that adorable Swedish high-powered, high-kicking real estate broker on Bravo’s Million Dollar Listing. Yesterday, Fredrik swooped into Dallas as part of a PR bliz for Plano-based mortgage broker Brian McCauley of the Real Estate Mortgage Network. I sat down with Fredrik at Brian’s office in Plano for a few minutes yesterday before he was swarmed. Have to say I have never met a more charming guy, especially when he takes my card and says, oh yes, I read your blog!

First, a little about Fredrik: he was born in Stockholm, Sweden, is a NYC real estate broker, has been an IT executive and an actor.

He’s been on the cover of the New York Times Style section, and has closed more than two billion in real estate. He came in dressed impeccably in a beautiful grey wool suit and wool tie, a warm Starbuck latte in hand. We compared shoes — both he and Brian were in leather lace-ups, but Fredrik had color on the sole edges, which he pointed out to us. He admired my chartreuse Kate Spades as well as what Brian McCauley was wearing. I was supposed to have 10 minutes, I took 15, and talked fast:

CD: So how would you market a listing in Dallas if, for some reason, you relocated here?

FE: I would do just what I do in New York City — the absolute best photos, stage the home so it looks beautiful, get it as much attention as possible, especially digitally. It’s all about the attention, about getting the listing out there so it sells. You have to lure people in to the listing and that’s why you need all the buzz, the noise. And whatever you do also has to have a stickiness to it.

There are 27,000 brokers in New York City, with 5,000 to 12,000 listings on the market at any given time. What do you do to stick out from the rest?

CD: You get on a TV show?

FE: I get a hundred calls a day from people wanting me to list their homes. Million Dollar Listing airs in 100 countries.

CD: And real estate sales are not just limited to local yokels anymore, are they. OK. Staging, animals or no — I wrote about New Yorkers using live animals in their listings, do you?

FE: I love animals and I love using them in listings, in photographs.

CD: In the videos?

FE: Exactly.

CD: Is the NYC market just going crazy right now?

FE: It’s so busy it’s almost uncomfortable. I have lived through two downturns, I have never seen a market like this. Prices are mad, prices are increasing, low inventory, it’s just insane.

CD: Dallas is pretty crazy too, my experts tell me they have never seen this much frenzy — and our inventory is way low. So what do you think about Dallas?

FE: I was so excited to come here. I watched every single episode of DALLAS, the TV show, my parents and I would watch it in Sweden. We loved it. We never missed one episode.

CD: Do you like the remake?

FE: I haven’t seen it.

CD: Not much time to watch TV, eh?

FE: No, and when I do, I watch Bravo, of course!