3400 NE 165th Street

The owners contacted Raphael when they decided to sell. The house sits in Eastern Shores, a neighborhood of single-family homes on the canals of North Miami Beach, just west of Sunny Isles Beach and minutes from Aventura.

It had not been renovated. Houses in that condition are usually marketed as a project, and priced by buyers who start from the cost of the work. Raphael set out to sell the house, the setting and the life it could hold instead.

The listing film shows Raphael, in a suit, falling backward into the pool, the frame at the top of this page. It went viral. So many viewers were convinced the scene was generated by AI that the closing announcement answered them directly: "Turns out the pool was real. So was the sale."

The film did what a listing has to do before anything else: it made people stop, watch to the end and talk about the house. For a seller, attention comes first: the more buyers look, the stronger the position at the negotiating table.

The house sold and closed in May 2026 for $3,000,000, with Raphael representing the sellers: a price set by the water, the setting and the life the house offered, not by the cost of the work it needed.

For owners of a house that needs work, the lesson is the same as for a finished home: the price is set by the buyer who wants it most, and the marketing exists to find that buyer.