SOLD: “Million Dollar Listing” Star Michael Lorber’s Main Line Crush House
Michael Lorber, onetime co-star of Bravo’s reality show Million Dollar Listing New York–and son of real estate magnate Howard Lorber–came to Philly last year to scope out real estate, perhaps thinking he might do better on the Main Line than in NYC. Rumor had it he was especially impressed by an eight-bedroom, almost 12,000-square-foot Walter K. Durham house in Bryn Mawr.
Now comes word that the house has sold for $4.6 million—a terrific price, and down just a skosh from the November 2012 asking price of $4.995 million. The buyer has not yet been named; could it be Lorber? Hey, Michael, give us a call.
Since Lorber last looked at homes in this area, his fortunes have shifted: He quit the show after he determined it was doing nothing for his business. He was also bothered by its artifice. In May he spoke with the New York Times about his experience:
It is filled with scenes recreated for the cameras, he said. Scenes of the brokers waking up in the morning, for instance, were often filmed in the afternoon. One time the producers asked him to dress in winter clothing in the summer to walk into a building, for a shot that would be added to a show that had been taped long before. “It was so stupid,” he said.
“Most of my clients don’t watch the show,” he added, noting that the thrust of his sales — co-ops — have never been represented on “M.D.L.N.Y.” because notoriously thorny co-op boards want nothing to do with it. “People do it for the fun and to be famous.”
Lorber did get famous, enough so that he was featured in Gotham Magazine where he dropped this delicious quip: “I follow the philosophy: ‘Think Yiddish, dress British.'” This colonial home is neither in the high Yiddish or proto-British style, but it does afford a sense of grandeur that one can imagine popping up on accented PBS programming.
