The Top Five Real Estate Movies about Deals & Money
From the outside, real estate might not appear exciting. This is far from the truth. When you are in the middle of buying a home, fixing a property up, or selling a house, real estate can be filled with adrenaline. If you buy and sell real estate for a living, there is a thrill involved in closing a sale or making a lot of money on a particular flip.
Several films have depicted this in a variety of ways. While the average home sale might not be worth making a movie about, the field of real estate provides all kinds of stories to inspire, entice, and warn the viewer. Below are the top five real estate movies about buying and selling homes, striking deals, and making money.
Glengarry Glen Ross
Glengarry Glen Ross just might be the most famous real estate movie out there. With a star-studded cast that includes Al Pacino, Kevin Spacey, Alec Baldwin, and Alan Arkin, the film depicts four real estate salesmen who received leads about people who lack the money or motivation to invest in real estate.
The characters then use deceit to follow these leads in hopes that they will make a lot of money. Then, the information about the leads is stolen. The rest of the film is a mystery about who stole the leads and why.
The movie brings up the ethics and legality of real estate deals, and asks the question, is wholesaling real estate legal? With different states having different laws, it depends on where you are. Whether you’re into real estate or not, Glengarry Glen Ross is a classic that focuses on real estate, the will to make money, and the ability to strike a deal.
The Big Short
Featuring Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Brad Pitt, and Ryan Gosling, The Big Short is a movie that aims to explore that housing crash of 2008 and what occurred before and after.
Based on the book of the same name, the film examines who knew that the crash of the real estate market was caused by the selling of subprime mortgages that created a bubble. While some greatly benefitted from the market crash, most people in the field, country, and world, suffered from it. It is a fascinating tale about finances, real estate, and the global economy.
The Money Pit
Tom Hanks and Shelley Long star in this comedic drama about an attorney and his girlfriend. They are forced to leave their apartment before Hanks’ character learns about the sale of a million-dollar mansion from his friend, who is a realtor.
The couple decides to buy the property but soon realizes that the cost of renovating it far outweighs the price of the home. If Hanks’ character’s real estate agent established a wholesale real estate contract, there would have been some legal ramifications. A classic about flipping a home, The Money Pit is a cautionary tale about buying, fixing up, and selling property.
Revolutionary Road
Based on Richard Yates’ novel, Revolutionary Road is about a married couple in the 1950 suburbs. It begins with them buying a house outside of New York City and explores the themes of marriage, conformity, and personal fulfillment. While the road they live on is a metaphor for changing your life, the movie takes a look at what it meant to buy a home in this glossy decade. It shows that it wasn’t as utopian as people believe it to be.
The Amityville Horror
The horror begins when a family purchases a home for a bargain price. While the rest of the movie concerns a haunting and the undead, it taps into fears that people have when they are buying property.
You’ll be spending your life in the house and the fears that come with this kind of commitment range from the monetary to the metaphysical. With a premise about buying a cheap home, there isn’t much to be learned when you are buying your first house but it taps into the strangely common fear of buying a haunted home.
Buying, fixing up, and selling homes is a huge part of the United States’ economy. It is no surprise that films of all genres depict the process, the problems, and the ability to both strike a deal and make some money. Real estate is a device to move a story forward. Will it move your story forward?
