The scene: an evening cocktail party around an infinity pool at an L.A. estate overlooking the Hollywood sign. Four women sporting bustiers, eight-inch stilettos and fresh facelifts begin arguing and pointing fingers. One leaves abruptly, her designer purse slamming against a bystander. The crowd sips matcha dragon fruit cocktails and stares, aghast.
These days, a soap-operatic scene like this is common fare in many reality TV shows about high-end real estate. Take Netflix’s “Selling Sunset,” “Buying Beverly Hills” and “Owning Manhattan,” which — though entertaining — often focus more on fashion and outsize personalities than on homes. The genre has become “very hard to watch,” says Billy Nash, a longtime real estate agent in Florida. “It’s so drama-based and scripted. It’s all about money and purple Lamborghinis.”
In 2023, Nash saw the need for a more edifying and uplifting alternative. The formula he had in mind? Retain the aspirational quality of existing real estate shows by offering viewers a window into rarefied global properties but omit the prospective buyers, deals and agent squabbling, and emphasize authenticity instead.
Like the documentary-style food and travel shows starring the author and chef Anthony Bourdain, Nash’s unscripted program, as he saw it, would shed light on each destination’s feel and character. “Passport Properties,” as he decided to call his cinematic docuseries, would be about travel and culture as much as real estate.
Creating a television show is an ambitious goal, but Nash felt confident he could make it happen. He had TV experience, having hosted Season 3 of the AWE show “Selling Mega Mansions.” He also had amassed the capital to fund the project from his decade working in real estate.
Nash filed global patents and trademarks for the name and concept and sought a producer to help create a “sizzle reel,” a short video to entice production companies to film a pilot. One of his contacts introduced him to a TV production executive, and he assembled a crew. They spent two weeks filming in Morocco, Spain and Italy and then edited 100 hours of footage down to a reel about two minutes long.
The sizzle reel worked. Nash, who had decided to form his own production company, found a global distributor, Blue Ant Media, to pitch the show to networks.
Two years after Nash had come up with the idea, his team was ready. They headed back to Europe in April 2025 and spent 4½ months filming the first season. In each location, Nash says, they “dug into the culture and the people and the lost artisans,” such as a lamp maker in Morocco and a third-generation family of knife makers in Sardinia, Italy.
Outside of Florence they visited Villa Antinori di Monte Aguglioni, once the home of the woman believed to be depicted in Leonardo’s Mona Lisa. “The property was … $23 million, but it was the story inside that home that resonated with me,” Nash says.
In Ronda, Spain, they filmed at the home of a bullfighting family whose patriarch had been friends with Ernest Hemingway; the legendary author had spent summers there. “I was able to put my hands on Ernest Hemingway’s typewriter,” Nash says.
In October, Nash and Blue Ant Media attended the global content conference MIPCOM Cannes. There they “shopped” “Passport Properties With Billy Nash” to networks and streamers, sharing the reel and a completed episode.
Networks in Poland, Portugal and Latvia licensed the nine-episode series, which began airing in those countries this summer. And Nash is optimistic his show will also be licensed for distribution in the United States. “Once you’re licensed with a big name, there’s a domino effect,” he says. “It’s almost like in fashion … where it starts in Paris and then goes to the States.”
In the meantime, his team is moving forward with the second season, which they will film this fall in Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, South Korea and Florida.
“Real estate television will always exist because people love to dream,” Nash says. “But that property doesn’t have to be surrounded by scripted drama and conflict. … This is not a ‘Real Housewives’ show. … Throwing wine in someone’s face and belittling them? There will always be a weird place on TV for that. … This is authentic elevated reality.”
In other words, cut the contentious cliff-hangers and replace them with pasta and palazzos — and stories people can connect with.
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