This D.C. real estate agent is closing huge deals with Trump-world elite
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It's a bright blue afternoon in May, and Daniel Heider is sitting at a table with prime-o views of the Washington Monument, his name engraved on a gilded tabletop reservation plaque.
- The venue: Ned's Club's private dining room for Founders Club members, who pay $125,000 to join. The outfit: a Navy blue Armani blazer and Patek Philippe watch. The topic of conversation: how he climbed to the top of D.C.'s most exclusive and expensive real estate sales.
Why it matters: The whole scene is a big 180 for a guy who once worked as a nightclub promoter and drove a dented Jetta before making a splash in D.C. real estate for filming "mansion porn" TikToks.
The big picture: Over the years, Heider, 38, has become known in Washington for selling ginormous, ultra-lux estates — positioning him perfectly for catering to the enormously wealthy cast of players moving into President Trump's Gilded Age D.C.
- According to media reports, he was involved in several recent headline-grabbing transactions: Howard Lutnick's $25 million Foxhall manse (the most expensive D.C. home sale ever), Mark Zuckerberg's $23 Woodland Normanstone pad, David Sacks' $10 million Northwest D.C. spot, and RFK, Jr.'s $4 million Georgetown crib.
Heider's secret sauce: He doesn't see himself as simply a real estate agent. He's more of a white-glove concierge meets sociologist meets therapist, he tells Axios, ready to do whatever it takes to make his clients happy and seal the deal.
Case in point: Heider's team has arranged for Mr. and Mrs. Claus to sing carols at clients' homes, sent tequila and a mariachi band to another client's house on their birthday, and pulled strings to snag clients last-minute rezzes at Le Dip, complete with a comped bill, his team's concierge, Aidan Bartenfelder, tells Axios.
- Bartenfelder has also driven three hours to Rehoboth in a full suit just to hand deliver flowers to a client (said flowers had to be from a shop in Georgetown), and once took care of a client's koi fish at their McLean house when they were out of town. The catch: He had to sing a Croatian ballad to the fish so they wouldn't "get lonely," he says. "My pronunciation definitely wasn't good."
The intrigue: Discretion is also key when working with billionaires, especially in D.C.'s current era of NDAs.
- Heider's response when asked about the Lutnick, Zuckerberg, Sacks and Kennedy deals: "No comment."
By the numbers: Heider's team sold over $400 million in real estate last year, and his group has been TTR Sotheby's International Realty's top-performing team for the past five years, a spokesperson tells Axios.
- Meanwhile, Heider says this year he's done mutual referrals with a Palm Beach partner to the tune of a combined nine figures. (A south Florida expansion of the Heider team footprint could happen eventually, he says.)
Flashback: Heider got his start in real estate at age 25 as an assistant at Washington Fine Properties, waiting tables at the Crystal City Morton's at night.
- But no baby steps for him: "I never felt that because I was brand-new I needed to adhere to, like, servicing rentals and working in $200,000 apartments," he told me in 2021.
- Instead, he started charming clients and posting glitzy photos on social media, establishing himself in the lux world he wanted to work in.
Some of his flashier tactics (see: "mansion porn") created waves in D.C. at the time, where longtime, old-school agents likely could never fathom posting a drone-powered TikTok of their listings complete with a techno soundtrack.
- Take one anonymous agent who told me in 2021: "If D.C. real estate is going the way of Daniel Heider, then I'm going to go get a different profession, you know what I mean? Because it's just gross. If I wanted to live in LA, I'd live in LA."
The other side: When asked at the Ned if he thinks he got the last laugh, Heider brings up the LA comment from several years ago.
- "If I'm laughing at anything, I'm laughing at that," he says. "I just want to know how the weather in California is."