A life of luxury, complete with an extravagant place to call home, is a fantasy for many people. Thank goodness for YouTube, then, for providing a space where we can vicariously live out our champagne wishes and caviar dreams.
“I would say YouTube escapism is ... I don’t want to say my top priority, but it’s very, very important,” says Alex Shapiro, cofounder and COO of real estate agency Blackship Realty, in an interview with The Japan Times. Shapiro is also the creator of the YouTube channel Tokyo Portfolio, which showcases luxury properties around the city. “I do realize the upper-end expat market is very small. If I was just going for that, I wouldn’t get any views.”
In both real estate and online content creation, the 30-year-old Shapiro primarily focuses on properties geared toward wealthy non-Japanese residents. With Blackship, which he helped launch in late 2021, he focuses on settling expats — people sent by their companies to work in Tokyo, or diplomats — in trendy and well-to-do areas such as neighborhoods in Minato and Meguro wards.