“In a world of nothing, of barren hills and cracked Earth and as soon as proud ocean straining via sand, there’ll nonetheless be a monument to our existence, bleached by the solar, maybe, and blunted by time, however eternal,” the announcer stated to the Actual Property Growth Award honorees sporting tuxes and robes, ready to be acknowledged for his or her contributions to towers that normally glorify their builders, not their gross sales dealer or chapter legal professional..
The occasion, which payments itself because the “most prestigious and credible honors in actual property” is the trade’s weirdest, most over-the-top awards ceremony. Right here, “elite professionals, corporations and visionaries” collect for honors like Elevator Contractor of the Yr and Buyer Service Excellence Award for Fireplace Alarm/Life Security.
The RED Awards’ founder, Selman Yalcin, has deliberate 15 ceremonies in 5 years. The Instagram-worthy evenings happen in South Florida, Chicago, Texas, California and — new for 2026 — Bucharest, Romania. Some RED galas are for the residential facet of the trade, and others for world gamers.
New York’s, in late April, was dedicated to business actual property, or “of us who’re both instantly or tangentially concerned in constructing new buildings,” as grasp of ceremonies and long-time business dealer Bob Knakal put it.
I went to the RED Awards to make sense of a web-based phenomenon. A number of instances every year, my X and LinkedIn feeds can be flooded first with purple, low-budget adverts after which with self-adulatory posts from winners in classes so off-kilter I figured folks have to be paying for them. What number of candidates may there be for finest expediter?
This system started on the purple carpet inside Membership 101 at 101 Park Avenue.
Glamorous girls in sparkly clothes interviewed attendees earlier than a dozen cameramen performed paparazzi by the step-and-repeat.
After cocktail hour, Knakal took the stage.
He doled out awards for greater than an hour, because the viewers clapped for: The Rising Mortgage Mortgage Officer of the Yr, Expeditor of the Yr, Tax Exemptions and Zoning Skilled of the Yr, and Transferable Growth Rights Dealer of the Yr.
“Each problem is definitely a present from God,” Dr. Ahsan Sattar of Emaret Capital Group, winner of the Multifamily Investor of the Yr, stated as he acquired his mounted plaque.
Sattar and different honorees gave their speeches in entrance of 200 visitors, hustlers and hopefuls linked to the awardees or occasion, together with husbands, wives, children, mother and father, girlfriends, co-workers, Knakal and announcer George Shea, the actual property PR maven and longtime host of Nathan’s Fourth of July Scorching Canine Contest. Yalcin shot all of it on his iPhone.
Throwing occasions is an trade of its personal, and actual property has loads of official (Real Estate Board of New York’s), less-official (#ReTwit’s) and philanthropic gatherings with speeches and prizes. Even amongst these, the RED Awards are simple to make enjoyable of: the award classes as obscure because the nominees, the promotions that seem made in Home windows 95 (or by AI) and the hosts’ crimson tuxedos. However the gala isn’t a faux.
“It’s one thing very, very severe,” stated Leo Jacobs, 2025’s Chapter Lawyer of the Yr and brother to this yr’s Contractor of the Yr. “I don’t suppose anybody who’s value their salt would say, you already know what, I’m going to decorate up like this as a result of I’m not going to take it severely. It’s loads of effort and work to decorate up and to appear to be that. It’s not a come-as-you-are. It notes the seriousness of the occasion.”
The architect of recognition
Yalcin has no companions. He oversees the occasions and the judging course of and even runs the social media accounts.
Yalcin doesn’t hail from an actual property dynasty. He was born in Turkey and began within the building enterprise earlier than he branched into networking occasions, internet hosting rooftop get-togethers and personal dinners. He estimates about 40,000 folks have attended his capabilities during the last decade.
About six years in the past, Yalcin found award reveals had been the final word schmooze-fest. He says he’s perfected the components.
There have to be no less than 25 awards, however not more than 30. Lifetime achievement honorees — somebody like Francis Greenburger — assist entice trade heavyweights. Venture-based awards carry out nicely. So do “folks’s selection” classes like Most Influential Particular person of the Yr. The black-tie costume code spells magnificence.
The RED Awards are not confined to U.S. ballrooms. This month, builders like Sam Charney and two dozen different nominees will fly to Bucharest to obtain awards in entrance of Romanian bigwigs and buyers from the Republic of Moldova on the Nationwide Museum of Artwork of Romania.
Subsequent, Yalcin says, he’s wanting on the United Arab Emirates, Portugal or possibly Africa for ceremonies. Businessmen and ladies across the globe are all in search of recognition, he stated.
“It helps their enterprise, it helps their model,” he stated. “In a means, it’s like profitable an Academy Award.”
Yalcin stresses the awards are legit. They aren’t a pay-for-play endeavor, and he doesn’t gather a payment on the functions. Particular person tickets to the occasion value $895 and a desk for ten is $8,700. A lot of the cash is made out of awardees or corporations shopping for tables.
He has a 20-person advisory board crammed with trade massive pictures like Kent Swig and Knakal.
“It’s all based mostly on advantage,” Yalcin stated.
Swig is the scion of an actual property dynasty and was as soon as considered one of Downtown Manhattan’s largest workplace landlords. Then got here the nice monetary disaster. Swig misplaced a bit of his portfolio to foreclosures and was concerned in an notorious dispute along with his then-partner Yair Levy that led to Levy hitting Swig within the head with an ice bucket.
Swig survived the ice bucket incident, and by 2021, he was the recipient of the RED Awards’ Distinguished New Yorker of the Yr award.
At first, Swig stated he was “suspect” of the awards, however he shortly grew to become a believer. Swig stated he grew to become so infatuated with the occasions that he now shares workplace area with Yalcin at 747 Third Avenue.
“That is peer-to-peer recognition,” Swig stated. “You may go do nice issues for charities and also you get acknowledged, however that is your trade.”
Yalcin has gotten emotional throughout awards displays. Previous honorees have included compliance architects, customized cabinetry design corporations, demolition contractors, 1031 change brokers, and, sure, elevator contractors.
“All of us use elevators. It’s one thing necessary,” Yalcin stated. “So I believe any person needed to acknowledge them and I’m glad we had been those that did it.”
The Horatio Alger award present
On the night time of the gala, Yalcin arrived hours earlier than the 7 p.m. begin time sporting a scarlet patterned tuxedo jacket, matching bow tie and loafers, and white pants. He handed out orders to the occasion workers and roamed the room taking movies on his telephone.
In a single nook, dazzling girls ready for interviews with winners. Within the different, an older man in a red-and-black tuxedo, deeply balding along with his remaining hairs slicked again, was engaged on his digicam.
His title: Alan Motion Schneider.
His enterprise card options roughly 10 corporations and a photograph of himself pointing instantly into the lens. His varied ventures embody automobile gathering, shopping for condemned properties, tv manufacturing and particular occasions promotion. Different previous companies embody selling Sugar Daddy occasions, or mixers the place older males can meet girls, and being the spokesperson for SugarDaddyForMe.com.
Motion is a part of the RED Awards manufacturing crew, although he stated the relationships he constructed via the occasions helped pull him into actual property.
“Being within the car-collecting enterprise, true to type, I by no means thought I’d be in the actual property enterprise,” stated Motion. “Now I personal a former financial institution, a church, a former college…”
Motion’s life is unusually eclectic. However the underlying story is remarkably frequent contained in the RED Awards universe. Attendees stated the occasions helped them construct real enterprise relationships — and, in some circumstances, totally new careers.
“I’ve met actually good folks that I’ve established, not solely enterprise relationships, however friendships,” stated Jacobs.
In fact, awards may also operate as a spot to restore reputations.
In 2022, the RED Awards honored developer Josh Schuster with Comeback Developer of the Yr, at the same time as Schuster confronted civil lawsuits from buyers. Three years later, federal prosecutors accused him of stealing greater than $10 million from buyers “to fund his life-style and repay earlier buyers in a Ponzi-like trend.” Earlier this yr, Schuster pleaded responsible to securities fraud.
“Generally we make a mistake,” Yalcin stated. “However how would we all know?”
Honorees strutted towards the stage because the paparazzi adopted them. They began their speeches subsequent to Knakal and a silent Yalcin.
Business acceptance speeches are typically excruciating tropes about arduous work and hard challenges, with no point out of the outstanding household enterprise, Ivy League diploma or hefty charitable donation made proper earlier than the popularity.
The RED Awards speeches struck a unique tone.
Many recipients had been immigrants — or youngsters of immigrants — telling tales that sounded nearer to Horatio Alger’s tales of kids with poor upbringings who rose to middle-class prosperity via arduous work.
In his speech, Sattar recalled studying that his mom in Pakistan wanted high-risk coronary heart surgical procedure shortly after he started shopping for residence buildings.
With out sufficient money left to proceed to purchase flats, Sattar stated he determined to accomplice with mates on an actual property deal — a call that finally led to the creation of his firm, Emaret Capital Group.
“My mother has recovered rather well,” he stated.
Desiree Yadidi of Sioni Group, representing her father and uncle who received the Skyscraper Growth of the Yr for Sioni’s Casoni undertaking, spoke concerning the household’s proud Iranian-Jewish lineage. Sioni is putting up a supertall with a wavy glass facade at West thirty seventh Road, the place the 81-story skyscraper at 989 Sixth Avenue towers over its Garment District neighbors.
“This tower marks a brand new period, whereas remaining deeply rooted in the place we started,” Desiree Yadidi stated. “Our story spans three generations.”
J. Scott Scheel, winner of the Visionary Vanguard Award for Pioneering Excellence Schooling and Wealth Creation in Business Actual Property for 25 Years, famous how massive of a second this was for him, “a excessive school-educated child from Cleveland, Ohio.”
The final winner, Actual Property Advocate of the Yr Humberto Lopes, ranted concerning the Mamdani Administration earlier than stepping off the stage.
An exhausted-looking Knakal ended the ceremony with a closing speech.
“Go get them, everyone,” stated Knakal. “Have an important night time.”
However the occasion wasn’t over.
Motion saved interviewing winners and Yalcin glad-handed attendees. The ladies in sparkly clothes snapped nonetheless extra selfies.
The mingling right here means one thing. On the RED Awards, an unrecognized title to the trade can discover themselves chatting with Knakal, high brokers and even trade icons like Ryan Serhant or Don Peebles, who attended earlier years.
Right here, everybody has an opportunity to dwell out their fantasy.
Yalcin turns into a world impresario, rubbing shoulders with overseas dignitaries. Jacobs transforms from a chapter lawyer into an trade energy participant. Alan Motion Schneider performs the a part of a distressed actual property investor, broadcaster and social butterfly.
The RED Awards are a surprisingly honest spectacle — a company ballroom crammed with folks being the particular person they dream they might be.
But when the occasion collection is a enterprise for its founder, Selman Yalcin, that’s as a result of he has tapped into one thing easy, profound and human: Everybody desires a trophy, and so they wish to obtain it in entrance of their family members.
The RED Awards gives the actual property world’s little-known and never-thanked an opportunity to indicate off success.
The fantasy retains rising. Quickly, to the Royal Palace of Bucharest. The following cease might be wherever. There’s a shiny new ballroom coming to the White Home, in spite of everything. Greatest Actual Property Developer Turned Commander in Chief might be on this system. Price a shot.
