Photo: Kait Peña/The SOCIETY Group
This year, the event known as the “Oscars of real estate” was held at Cara Delevingne’s triplex at the Gramercy, an imposing redbrick and terra-cotta co-op on the southeast corner of the park. When I arrived, at 3:30 p.m. on a very hot Wednesday, Terry Cohen, a Compass broker who currently has a $69 million listing on Dune Road in Bridgehampton, was waiting at the front door. Once inside, it was bad news for both of us that the air-conditioning was out; brokers in suits and skirt suits chatted effortfully in front of oscillating fans while drinking sponsored rosé. The Power Broker Awards, put on annually by the public-relations firm the Society Group and The Hollywood Reporter, celebrate the city’s real-estate agents with honors like Media Maverick (being someone like Ryan Serhant) and Stratospheric Sale of the Year (generally something in a high multiple of $10 million). It’s rarified air: The business of brokering isn’t uniformly lucrative, but most of the night’s attendees work the high and very high ends of the market, which are generally impervious to economic downwinds, mortgage rates, war, and gravity.
This high end of the market is arguably where Delevingne’s apartment sits. And if a person was so inclined, they could buy it right now for $9.45 million. The event was hosted at the six-bedroom, five-bath home because, per Alexander Ali of the Society Group, it is “so unique, so different” that if someone wants to know what’s selling in New York, “this is it.” But Delevingne’s apartment is also, strangely, a sort of museum of Jimmy Fallon’s life and tastes. This is because Delevingne bought it from Fallon in 2022 and seems to have just, well, left everything as it was. And Fallon’s apartment is … specific. The décor is what my colleague Zach Schiffman has described as “the Overlook Hotel in The Shining with a maximalist color palette.” Delevingne loved it. “I kept it all. It’s creepy,” she told Fallon after buying the place and appearing on The Tonight Show.
Photo: Kait Peña/The SOCIETY Group
Photo: Kait Peña/The SOCIETY Group
The brokers, being brokers, were eager to give me a tour. “All of this was designed by Jimmy’s wife, in conjunction with Jimmy,” said Marta Maletz, an agent at the Gambino Group, which is part of Compass, which most things are right now, as she led me around during the cocktail hour. The wallpaper in the bathroom still features silhouettes of Fallon’s family tree. There is a “Harry Potter–inspired cupboard” under the stairs with a faux fireplace designed for Fallon’s children to play in, though maybe someone in Delevingne’s life has played in it since. Diana, the house manager who embodies extreme competence, showed me that even the Tivo was still set to Fallon’s family account. (The only signs of Delevingne’s existence were the clothes in the closet and a Playstation 5 in the primary bedroom.)
No one around me seemed to find any of this strange. Brokers mingled in a green plaid room with a wet bar and a chandelier made of antlers, the only floor with working air-conditioning, as if it was just any other room. “I walked in and everyone was assailing me about off-market listings,” Bianca D’Alessio, who starred in Selling the Hamptons and is lately spending a lot of time with new development listings on West 14th and Hudson Street, told me. I watched as Tim Davis, a Hamptons broker whose listings range from $30 million to the enigmatic “price upon request,” introduced himself to Selling the City’s Steve Gold and pulled him aside to talk shop. At one point, Greg Vladi, a Serhant broker who was nominated for the Rising Star category and whose active listings are in the comparably modest neighborhood of $2 million to $4 million, introduced himself to everyone as “Greg Vladi.”
I asked people what they thought of the apartment. “It’s supercool, I would buy it,” Cohen said. Davis, a Corcoran agent, who was nominated for Hamptons Sale of the Year, said that it felt “like a private club.” He then asked me if someone famous owned it, though didn’t seem to recognize Delevingne’s name after I said it. I found an interior designer and assumed he might have some critiques, but he gushed over the art, which includes a dog dressed as a decorated military captain and a portrait of JFK painted directly onto the wall.
Photo: Clio Chang
Photo: Clio Chang
This kind of neutrality, I realize, is baked into the premise of the evening. Despite the fact that this is nominally an awards show, the awards themselves seem ancillary to the purpose of the night, which is actually to network with other brokers. By 5 p.m., Ali, the founder of the Society Group, got onstage to announce the awards, promising to be quick because of the heat. (I watched as a broker at the bar wiped his brow, asked for a glass of water, gulped it down, then asked for a refill.) The speeches were brief. “Okay,” Cohen said when her name was announced as the winner of the Hamptons Sale of the Year. Once onstage, she added: “See you out East!” Corcoran broker Cathy Franklin won the Stratospheric Sale award for a property that went unnamed but could be an $89 million penthouse she has in contract on Madison Avenue. “I know all the brokers in the room, I love them, this is such a great group,” she said as thanks.
Ali kept his promise — 20 minutes later the ceremony was over. Agents exchanged phone numbers and Instagram handles before dispersing, walking down a staircase lined with an orange shag carpet overlooked by a painting of Martin Luther King Jr. As I left, I saw Greg Williamson, now an award-winning Douglas Elliman broker, say goodbye to someone named Fran while also kind of summarizing the night: “Fran, let’s have lunch — I gotta go, I’m too hot.”
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