Stream It Or Skip It: 'Selling Tampa' On Netflix, A 'Selling Sunset' Spinoff In The Sunshine State

Selling Tampa is a reality series about the agents at Allure Realty, founded by Sharelle Rosado in 2019. They deal in high-end homes in the Tampa area; “We live where other people go on vacation,” says one of the agents. It’s an all-female, all-BIPOC agency, mainly because Sharelle worked at agencies where she was the only woman of color and wanted to change that. Of course, this being a spinoff of Selling Sunset, the agents all have strong personalities that often clash with each other.

Opening Shot: Shots of the Tampa/St. Petersburg coast. We zoom in on a huge house whose selling price is $8.5 million.

The Gist: Allure is selling agent for that $8.5 mil property, and they’re going to have a party/open house for their high-roller clients. There’s a discussion that the two young and single realtors in the office, Anne-Sophie Petit-Frere and and Colony Reeves, should dress appropriately and not use the occasion to flirt with clients. At another property, Colony openly flirts with client Cho, and when Anne-Sophie, who is from Haiti, joins them, she speaks to the client in French, annoying Colony to no end.

We’re introduced to two more associates, Juawana Colbert and Tennille Moore, over drinks with Sharelle, as they talk about their home and dating lives — Sharelle is dating former NFL receiver Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson. Tennille nicknamed Juawana “HR” because “she’s always up in everybody’s business.”

Rena Upshaw Frazier, who used to be a high-powered attorney, shows a house to a client and puts some gentle pressure on her to put in a bid right there and then. At the open house, she gets annoyed that Sharelle picked a staff picture that didn’t include her in it.

At some point, Sharelle has to take some time off to help her mother, whose house burned down. Juawana takes over and leads a meeting about the open house, reading from a Wikipedia entry about “cocktail attire.” Anne-Sophie and Colony both scoff at Juawana and her micromanagement, but they also complain that Sharelle only comes by the office every so often.

At the party, Rena is the first to make fun of Juawana’s dress, but Colony agrees in her interview, calling it “awful.”

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Like Selling Sunset, Selling Tampa has equal elements of real estate porn and Real Housewives-style drama.

Our Take: Selling Tampa has a couple of advantages of its parent show, at least when we compare how each of them started. One is that the Allure Agency is started by a woman and has an all-female agent roster. There is no misogynistic douchey male boss calling these professional, strong women “girls” like there was on Sunset. Also, because Sharelle looks to hire women of color for her agency, it’s a great opportunity to show professional BIPOC women in their element, doing business and making lots of cash.

Of course, there’s the inevitable issue of whether we’re willing to see these seemingly successful women get annoyed with each other and have beefs over things that no one outside their group cares about. Since the real estate porn is basically the same as it is on every other real estate reality show, the entertainment value of the show comes down to the personalities of the cast. For now, the cast members haven’t distinguished themselves from each other for the most part, but there are definitely beefs there.

Will the beefs get more in-depth then the tiny personality squabbles we see in the first episode? Probably. And, we hate to say this, but the sooner the show gets there, the better. If we’re going to watch professional women get personal with each other, we might as well get more than just one person chuckling at another person’s choice of attire, right?

Sex and Skin: We see a lot of tight, short dresses and plunging necklines, but that’s it.

Parting Shot: Sharelle toasts her agents for their successful year.

Sleeper Star: Rena, only because we wonder how much more she’s making working for Allure than she did as a high-powered attorney.

Most Pilot-y Line: Nothing really, but one day we’d like to see a show that deals with the realities of the current real estate market, where even modest houses get many bids and go for thousands over asking, freezing the middle class out of the market.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Selling Tampa has its issues, and we hope it gets more interesting. But just the fact that an agency like Allure exists is enough for us to recommend the show.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Selling Tampa On Netflix