How else could these three characters have ended up in one room except as part of a social media stunt to sell a hacienda in the Texas Hill Country? There was Kai Cenat, the most popular entertainer on streaming platform Twitch; Tony Parker, French-American MVP of the legendary 2000s-era San Antonio Spurs lineup; and Erwin Nicholas II, better known as Mr. Real Estate.
Parker owned the location, an estate at 9 Rue Parker in Boerne which he wanted to offload. A Kuper Sotheby’s International Realty agent tried unsuccessfully to move the home the traditional way, but Parker took it off the market after failing to get a $19.5 million ask. Parker then hired Nicholas, a Houston real estate player who works with sports stars and celebrities, to market the 53-acre property, set amid Boerne’s coveted scenery and access to dark skies, wineries and biergartens, German architecture and exotic hunting ranches. Nicholas heard that Cenat, who’s in a collective of streamers and influencers called AMP Squad, was looking for a place to host a “subathon” — a livestream that would go 12 hours a day, 30 days in a row. Feeling that Parker had exhausted his options on the local Multiple Listing Service, Nicholas thought Cenat could market the home and its amenities to AMP Squad’s 19 million followers.
“Essentially, it’s a really big open house,” Nicholas said.
Heralded by a teaser video featuring T-Pain, Cenat and his gang moved in. The performers racked up tens of millions of views. On a July day near the end of the subathon, they held a pool party. Hip-hop throbbed from the subwoofers as Cenat strode out of the mansion, weaving through hundreds of friends, fellow internet celebrities, fans on pilgrimage and locals who mobbed the Romanesque courtyard, their liquor bottles scattered on benches, plinths and flowerbeds.
The camera caught aspects of the property consistent with the “unparalleled privacy, uncompromising security and refined luxury” in the listing, like the lagoon, the waterpark (the largest residential one in the U.S.) and the Spanish architecture. It captured others that probably wouldn’t have been publicized: the livestreamers’ portable toilets, food trucks, dunking booth, buffet line, impromptu boxing ring and chatter.
“This is hot and boring. This is the boonies. You gotta come to the city,” a woman in a bikini yelled. Kai nodded, and the woman’s friend tried to pull her away: “You heard of the Alamo and shit like that?”
Nicholas was an unlikely producer for this scene. Unlike Cenat, Mr. Real Estate is — was — largely unknown. As a Houston investor and broker specializing in working with athletes and entertainers on their real estate purchases, he’s operated until now with no advertising, no team and often no MLS, focusing mostly on off-market trades.
“Most athletes have an assistant, obviously an agent, or a financial adviser. These are the people that actually make the decisions.”
His lone-wolf approach cost him access to the broader market, but he says it’s gained him entry into the opaque world of selling homes for the suddenly super-rich, often in private. It’s not clear how many luxury homes are sold off-market, but non-disclosure laws and high property taxes make Central Texas a national hotspot for such trades, according to local agents. The story of Nicholas’ rise sheds light on this world, especially the ultra-private transactions of celebrity athletes, where real-life connections to the éminences grises behind them are the highest form of currency.
While some agents make a business out of Instagram, Nicholas has publicized almost none of his deals. It’s not that secrecy is key, in his opinion; it’s that publicity isn’t profitable. Clicks and SEO are only currency to agents who find clients online.
But it’s hard to avoid the public square. As the Sun Belt residential market flags, even at the luxury end, Mr. Real Estate is making use of his clients’ fame for the first time to source and close deals. Still, Twitch streaming could be a long shot as a strategy for selling a mansion in Boerne, and he’s still waiting to see if he’ll sink it. If he can sell Parker’s home after Cenat’s residency, that could settle the score — and maybe help the chances of one of America’s most expensive listings, a $195 million Beverly Hills estate that he recently signed on to sell.
The draft
As a college student studying biology on a merit scholarship in the 2000s, Nicholas nursed an entrepreneurial ambition. Nicholas was drawn to star athletes and celebrities from the start; he recognized a gap in the market in Houston for agents that served celebrities, as compared to glamour-saturated California and New York. He trawled nightclubs after class as a junior, hoping to gin up real estate business and get mentioned in the society blogs to build some name recognition. This didn’t work out exactly how he had hoped: An NBA player he’d been scouting forgot his name and addressed him as Mr. Real Estate. The name stuck.
He mapped out players’ favorite haunts. Over cocktails and under strobe lights, Nicholas slipped his business card to Astros, Rockets and Texans.
His connections eventually brought him his first marquee deal: a leasing gig for Adrian Peterson, the East Texas native and record-setting NFL running back. As fate, or style, would have it, Nicholas called around and found Peterson a house that once belonged to fellow Houston football legend Warren Moon.
“I was able to secure his house, and that established my credibility in the athlete world,” Nicholas said.
Multiple high-profile Houston athletes followed: NFL cornerback Xavien Howard, Astros fielder Michael Bourn, NBA star DeAndre Jordan and No. 1 shooting guard Jalen Green among them. He took Drake around town and showed homes to comedian Gary Owens.
The initiation was twofold. As Houston’s glitterati recognized Nicholas as a member of the court, their managers, agents and advisers recognized the young entrepreneur offered more than just flash.
The drive
In the high-touch Texas luxury sphere, it’s almost more important to connect with the entourage than with potential clients themselves. Millionaires in their twenties tend to delegate real estate decisions to risk-averse gatekeepers who prefer to work with people they already trust.
“Most athletes have an assistant, obviously an agent, or a financial adviser. These are the people that actually make the decisions,” Nicholas said. “I ended up just networking with advisers, seeing who’s working with who.”
Nicholas shares a client with Jacob Wilson, a former Wells Fargo executive who’s now a financial adviser to some members of the Dallas Cowboys and a few entertainment celebrities. The two are cut from similar cloth. Wilson’s firm, Riley, Darby and Wilson Private Wealth Management, doesn’t even have a website. Like Nicholas, Wilson gets clients almost solely through referrals. He won’t say which of them works with Nicholas, nor does he elaborate much on how they got to know each other, except to cite “a mutual friend.”
Wilson does say he vetted Nicholas thoroughly before he referred him.
The peculiar challenge of representing athletes, Wilson notes, is that they frequently move. Additionally, they can’t be sure of how long they’ll stay in the game.
“It’s rare to find a professional athlete that’s, for example, like Dak [Prescott], that’s stayed here for, what, 10 years? Awesome for him, that’s fantastic. But that’s not all athletes,” Wilson says. “How much home can they afford? They see all this new money; is the money going to be there forever? What’s prudent?”
It’s easy to find examples of carelessness: Vin Baker, the former NBA All-Star who ended up managing a Starbucks, or Randy Brown, who had to auction off the championship rings he earned alongside Michael Jordan after declaring bankruptcy.
“With the athletes and entertainers, specifically athletes, a lot of their money is made on the front end,” Wilson said. “The first thing that you have to think through with somebody that suddenly comes into money is, you just want to protect it, because it may not happen again. This could be a one-time thing.”
By 2010, one of Nicholas’ networking leads brought him to a bowling alley where Texans tackle Frank Okam liked to play on Wednesdays. Team members and other athletes often joined him, including an NBA rookie named Patrick Patterson, freshly drafted by the Rockets. Up to that point in his life, the young Patterson had relied on a savvy school friend to essentially serve as his manager, handling some fiscal decisions and helping Patterson stay organized. After the friend moved back home to pursue a career as a wealth adviser, Nicholas filled in.
“[Patterson] basically asked me to be a part of his team. He kept calling me — ‘What is this?’ ‘Where is that?’ I was like, ‘You need help?’ And he said, ‘Yeah,’” Nicholas said. “I was damn near his roommate.”
He managed Patterson’s affairs for several years while also networking with other gatekeepers and learning concretely what athletes and their advisers need. Once Patterson moved on to a new team, Nicholas was ready to pivot to real estate full time.
The deep three
To hear Nicholas describe it, joining a brokerage or team is a sort of Faustian bargain, a trade of long-term freedom for immediate gain. He’s never split a commission.
“There’s no clients there,” he says simply. “And it’s not productive for me if I’m out here really networking and building relationships. … I’m not trying to be the president of nobody.”
Holding things close to one’s chest has its benefits. To clients like Will and LeBrina Jackson — a retired NFL cornerback and reality television star, respectively — Nicholas’ straightforwardness, privacy and hyper-local experience made him the best choice. Will’s agent referred the couple to Nicholas, and he sold them their current home, an equestrian estate just west of Houston.
“Honesty and the ability to educate a client without all the fluff, without all the BS” — those were Nicholas’ winning traits, LeBrina said.
A sports agent’s trust is hard-won, and it lasts, according to Wilson. The task of guarding a twenty-something athlete’s volatile wealth requires gatekeepers to consider a lifetime of home purchases, not just the next one.
“If you’ve got a good real estate professional, you’re talking to this person all the time. They shouldn’t be just advising on this specific transaction. They should be a consultant to your real estate portfolio or needs for many, many years,” Wilson said.
But while Nicholas has found a deeply loyal clientele in a wealthy niche, he’s also forsworn the resources and branding of firms like Compass and Sotheby’s, not to mention the exposure of the internet. Over his 20-year career, Nicholas has completed $375 million in sales volume. The top luxury agent in Houston, Compass’ Laura Sweeney — who, it should be noted, has had a longer career — completes about $150 million each year.
Then again, Wilson says, if you’re not one of the few real estate agents a financial adviser has learned to personally trust, you’re not going to get his client’s listing — no matter what logo might be on your business card.
Still, Nicholas is continuing his adventure in publicity. When the Jacksons listed the farm at 20431 Old Windmill Trail in August, hoping to move to a farm with more space for their horses, it became Nicholas’ second publicized listing, appearing in Jennifer Gould’s Gimme Shelter column at the New York Post.
But it’s unclear whether the modern online leads will move the homes. Whatever a broker’s strategy, homes are selling more slowly, and the general market has flipped to buyers in many metros, including Austin, once the trendiest city in the Lone Star State, and Houston, one of the top five biggest metros in America to see annual price depreciation.
At the moment, Parker’s hacienda in Boerne is still on the market, though some buyers have expressed interest.
Cenat, meanwhile, has been hard at work in Beverly Hills. AMP Squad just finished another subathon at the Palazzo di Amore, the Beverly Hills compound owned by tycoon Jeff Greene, another seller dissatisfied with the uncreative efforts of previous agents, who enlisted Nicholas to sell his $195 million property. At one time, it was the most expensive public listing in the country.
Attention isn’t the only new thing for Nicholas, who plans to keep the same asking price when it hits the market. He is also co-listing with another agent, Patrick Michael of LA Estate Brokerage. During the subathon, Kim Kardashian and Miley Cyrus swung by. LeBron James gave Cenat a haircut on camera. And Nicholas’ long shot is hanging in midair.
“If you have the best house that offers something that you want the world to see, why not?” Nicholas said.
