He was once the face of “Big Money Energy”, but these days Barfoot & Thompson luxury agent Paul Neshausen is a little more circumspect.
Neshausen’s flash billboards dominated Auckland’s Tamaki Drive in the 2010s. The marketing and the mantra, learned from US uber agent Ryan Serhant and reality TV star, won him a lot of attention and business.
“Big money energy got me to a certain stage. I’m moving on to the next thing, which is all about the media side of real estate,” Neshausen told OneRoof in an exclusive interview at his stylish St Heliers home overlooking the harbour.
His interest in luxury – the products, the people who buy them and the houses they fill with the best of the best – is both personal and forensic.
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“I’ve always been passionate about luxury, not just goods and services and products, but also the science behind luxury – how it works, why people are attracted to it, and how that industry keeps itself at the forefront of people with money.”
Paul Neshausen: “Nice cars, nice art, nice clothes, nice everything, nice houses. And so that’s how I’m wired.” Photo / Fiona Goodall
He said that from his humble roots in the Hamilton suburb of Melville, through working in business-to-business sales in London and Europe, and back to Auckland, he’s always liked nice things.
“Nice cars, nice art, nice clothes, nice everything, nice houses. And so that’s how I’m wired. It’s unfortunate because I would have had a lot more money if I’d saved it when I was younger,” he laughed.
“Nothing inhibited me, and I just took on the world. I thought, ‘Why can’t I do it?’ and just ignorantly or arrogantly backed myself.”
Surrounding himself with good art – the home he shares with his wife Tania is packed with pieces by top New Zealand names, including Colin McCahon, Paul Dibble, Max Gimblett and Shane Cotton, and furnishings from Louis Vuitton, Fornasetti, Dolce & Gabana and Versace – mixing with other luxury lovers at global events and charity fundraisers and talking about his life on social media blur the lines between work and play.
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“Louis Vuitton has invited us overseas quite a few times. We’ve been to Formula One, we’ve been to the tennis, we’ve been to France to meet their head perfumery people. You know, these are once-in-a-lifetime things. They’re incredible. So eternally grateful and very lucky,” he said.
For Neshausen, that media world includes not only domestic channels, but also Chinese ones, such as RedNote and WeChat. He’s had months of language lessons and frequently travels to luxury real estate conferences in China.
“It’s all about, ‘this is my personality, this is what I like, here’s what I’m doing, here’s my hot wife enjoying it with me’,” Neshausen said.
Tania, with whom he shares seven kids and seven grandkids, gets the #hotwife hashtag on social media and a glorious rose gold Bentley GTC the couple flew to England to pick up. After buying his first flash wheels as a youngster for a price he estimates exceeded his parents’ annual wages, these days Neshausen relishes the impracticality of turning up at open homes with a flag squeezed into the passenger seat of his Porsche 911 Targa.
Neshausen in his awards-night suit. He loves fashion and isn’t afraid to celebrate luxe. Photo / Fiona Goodall
Neshausen’s Big Money Energy ads were part of his brand and the Auckland landscape. Photo / Supplied
He is a fan of Ryan Serhant, who hit our screen 15 years ago in Million-Dollar Listing New York and later spinoffs, and is keen to emulate the way Serhant mixes media and property business tools to sell luxury homes.
“I’m always trying to be at the bleeding edge of real estate, trying different things. I’ve got a bit of a destination where I want to go, which is a hybrid model of real estate right now,” he said, adding that he likes mixing with agents from competing brands to build his “ecosystem”.
“I’m just interested in being different and helping my clients sell property in a more contemporary way.”
And since his first customer 13 years ago – a Lotto winner who happened to walk into the office in Neshausen’s first month on the job – the agent has worked on long-standing relationships with clients, with buyers and suppliers, not just one-off deals.
“I happened to be the man on the spot in the office, and he’d just won $30 million. He went on to buy several houses off me in Auckland and Queenstown,” he said.
"We became friends in the end, more so than agent-vendor. We were mates. We’d go out for a beer and dinner and things like that. Go buy cars together. Go on holiday together. And it was fun.”
He reckons he has never had to fire a client or walk away from a deal, although some personalities have been challenging and take some work – something he learned in his decades of business-to-business sales.
These days, Neshausen is more circumspect about saying how much he earns (in a 2020 interview he’d said he made $2m in commissions).
“I’ve had slightly better years than that,” he admitted.
“I’m not so brash anymore and share what I earn all the time because there are people not earning much money at the moment and struggling to pay the rent.”
Neshausen said he is free with sharing his trade secrets and how he works, because most people won’t follow up.
“You can tell people until you’re blue in the face, but they don’t do it.”
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