Meet Buying London’s divisive Daniel Daggers: ‘Mr Super Prime’ says UK version of Selling Sunset ‘creates loads of business opportunities’ despite hate

Sell ​​sunsetits British counterpart, Buy Londonis causing quite a stir and is being praised by The Guardian as the “most hateful TV show ever made”. But according to Netflix Tudum, despite the mixed reviews, Buy London spent one week on Netflix’s global Top 10 TV Shows chart and appeared on the streaming platform’s Top 10 TV Shows chart in 24 countries, including the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada.

Thanks to all this, the reality TV show’s stars are enjoying a spike in popularity since the show premiered in May. Daniel Daggers, the self-proclaimed Mr Super Prime for the luxury properties he represents, boasts that the show has generated “huge” profits for DDRE Global, the London-based company he founded in 2020. “We have very comfortably over £270 million (US$356.3 million) worth of real estate that has come to us for marketing and sales,” he told Spear’s magazine in June. Daggers also said on This morning that the show is meant to be seen as entertainment rather than a documentary – and when asked to respond to the bad reviews, he added: “We enjoy it. It creates a lot of business opportunities for us.”

Here’s what we know about Daniel Daggers, who boasts “members of the Middle Eastern royal family as clients” and was named Property Adviser of the Year by Spear’s in 2019.

What is Daniel Daggers’ background?

Daniel Daggers’ father, Derrick Daggers, is English, and his mother, Noga Kapara, is Yemeni and Israeli. Derrick was a kitchen designer when his son was growing up. He now lives near Tel Aviv, where he describes himself as a “freelance property consultant,” according to British media.

In the 1960s, Derrick Daggers was reportedly active in the casino business, as co-owner of Pair of Shoes Casino and the Penthouse Club. However, according to the same source, both companies lost their licenses due to mafia connections.

Daniel Daggers came from humble beginnings

These days, Daggers may be living it up with his girlfriend in London’s posh Little Venice, but the property consultant grew up in a 6,000-square-foot house in what was then a council estate in Maida Vale. “There were a lot of kids in the skyscrapers and these flats,” he told British Tatler. “A lot of kids of different races, different backgrounds. That was my life.” He added that it was “a rude awakening because some of the kids had no parents or only one parent. They were dealing drugs, stealing, and they had a hard life.”

He was once an aspiring footballer

In the same Tatler interview, Daggers shared his boyhood dream of becoming a professional footballer. He managed to turn semi-professional, playing for Hayes FC as a central midfielder. However, the Arsenal supporter’s footballing dreams were shattered after a collarbone injury. With that door closed, Daggers told Country & Town House in May: “I realised I didn’t want to continue studying and I wanted some independence.”

So at age 17 he started working for an independent brokerage firm, Vickers & Company, in Maida Vale, where he sold his first home in 1997 for £110,000 (US$145,000). Within a decade he had a job with Knight Frank, a leading property consultancy.

He left Knight Frank under a cloud

Daggers certainly uses social media to his advantage and understood early on the benefits of building a following – but it was also his downfall. In 2019, he left Knight Frank after his controversial decision to post photos of a client’s £10 million (US$13.2 million) home on Instagram without permission, raising privacy concerns. And while that was “a really difficult time”, as Daggers told PrimeResi in October 2022, “it also gave me the freedom to really pursue what I knew was the future”.

DDRE Global and other companies

Shortly after leaving Knight Frank, Daggers founded DDRE Global. Speaking to Country & Town House in May, he described his company as “the sixth most influential property company in the UK when it comes to marketing and selling homes over £5 million (US$6.6 million)”. DDRE Global also includes DDRE Studios, which specialises in digital content production.

Recently, Daggers launched his DDRE Academy, to support agents and service providers in their careers. He is also the founder of marketing platform ADVSR.ai.

He has advice for the industry when it comes to AI

Daggers believes the only way for agents to outperform AI is to create content and a personal brand that people can connect to. “It’s now one of the only ways you can protect yourself from the sea of ​​AI models,” he wrote in a LinkedIn post, adding that “what AI can’t do is create personal connections between people.”

On the other hand, he seems to embrace virtual reality, as seen in Buy London – but as he admitted to House Beautiful in May, he “hasn’t used it on clients.”