Over 5 years, Zar Zanganeh, then a young agent with Las Vegas Sotheby’s International Realty, nurtured a relationship with the musician until his death in 2009. In the process, he signed deals for Jackson, Brittney Spears and Prince, whom he was asked to spy on by the King of Pop.
That’s why the office’s agents were skeptical — to say the least — when a fishy-looking email came into Las Vegas Sotheby’s International Realty’s general inbox in 2004.
The message came from a woman named Grace Rwaramba, who, she claimed, represented a potential client living in a castle in Ireland. The client, she said, was interested in one of the brokerage’s high-end rental listings, and she asked about its security features, including whether the home was guard gated versus privately gated and details about the home’s panic room.
“Everybody kind of treated it like one of those Nigerian prince emails,” Zar Zanganeh, now a broker and managing partner of The Agency Las Vegas, recalled to Inman. “It just looked like a scam and like it wasn’t serious. So nobody gave it much thought.”
But Zanganeh, who was in the midst of launching his career as a real estate agent at Sotheby’s was a ripe 23-years-old. In his own words, he was “the youngest, least successful person,” at the brokerage and had nothing to lose and everything to gain by taking a chance and seeing where the lead might go.
So, despite overhearing water cooler chatter and consensus opinion that “you’d have to be an idiot to respond to an email like this,” Zanganeh hit “reply.”
Little did the naive young agent know the lucrative connection and genuine friendship that would follow.
Zanganeh’s email correspondence with the still unidentified client evolved into what he likened to a pen pal relationship via AOL Instant Messenger over the course of several months. The two discussed real estate, but also anything else the client wanted to talk about — and those topics truly included “anything,” Zanganeh told Inman.
“We’re talking everything from houses to, ‘What are you watching tonight on TV?’ at like 11:30 at night, and I don’t even know what time it is in Ireland,” Zanganeh, now 39, told Inman. “And he’s like, ‘Well, what did you have for dinner tonight?’ and I’m saying, ‘Oh, you know, I didn’t really eat dinner, I just had a Twix bar’ and he goes, ‘Oh I love Twix, have you ever had the Twix candy with the ice cream in it?’ And just nonsense. Like 45 minutes of IM’ing back and forth on AOL of all things.”
It was now 2005, and, at the time, the friendship was in the spirit of the moment, when people were just beginning to use the internet as a means of social connection.
“It created some of kind of friendship like you would in the late ’90s and early 2000s, through Instant Messenger and AOL and chat rooms and things like that,” Zanganeh said. “It felt very much like that, and it was very innocent.”
After months of nurturing the relationship, the client — whose identity Zanganeh still didn’t know — told the agent he was ready to move forward with plans to rent the property. It was an eight-bedroom, nine-bathroom gated property at 2785 S. Monte Cristo Way that featured an outdoor pool and spa, private tennis court and indoor orchestra loft overlooking the grand ballroom.
Zanganeh helped arrange a wire transfer so that the client could place a deposit on the luxury rental, and someone from the client’s team reached out with his arrival details into Las Vegas’ Harry Reid International Airport via a private airplane.
They gave Zanganeh the plane’s tail number so that he could meet them there, and that was Zanganeh’s second hint (after the whole Irish castle thing) that this client might not just be the average Joe.
He was also thoroughly confused because he had never dealt with a private plane before and had no idea what a tail number was, or why the client’s team wouldn’t just give him the airline and flight number.
During the final prep call with the clients’ team before Zanganeh was to meet him, his assistant asked Zanganeh if he knew the client’s identity. Trying to play it cool, Zanganeh said, “Yeah, of course, we’ve been talking for months.” But the client’s rep knew better and said, “Just so you understand, it’s Michael Jackson.”
“I remember thinking like, ‘What the Hell? That’s who I’ve been communicating with?’” Zanganeh told Inman.
Zanganeh pulled his car up to the plane, and Michael Jackson got in the front passenger seat, followed by a security guard who situated himself in the rear. Two SUVs trailed them to the listing, with Michael’s luggage in tow.
After Zanganeh did a thorough home tour, and was about to leave Jackson to spend the first night in his new home, Jackson asked, “Aren’t you going to stick around for dinner? Where’s the chef?”
Zanganeh’s heart skipped a beat. No, he hadn’t arranged for a chef, nor did he realize this was something that Jackson might consider a typical Realtor service. He had equipped the home with a TV, bed and linens, as Jackson’s team had requested, but hiring a chef hadn’t occurred to him, nor did stocking the house with food.
So Zanganeh ended up driving the superstar to get takeout from KFC that evening, as well as showing him and his staff where the closest Whole Foods was located.
For some agents, that may have been the end of the story, aside from some brief check-ins here and there until the next transaction.
But Zanganeh’s relationship with Jackson had only just begun.
Because of his need for privacy as a celebrity and as someone who had been embroiled in child abuse lawsuits for years, Jackson had all of his mail delivered to Zanganeh. So, the agent ended up going to Jackson’s house every day or two to hand off his packages and mail. Sometimes he would linger and chat or end up staying for dinner, and ultimately, their relationship developed to the point where Zanganeh would join Jackson for birthday parties, holiday gatherings and other intimate occasions.
Zanganeh also became a trusted advisor to Jackson in more ways than one, warning him when his staff told him that grocery bills ran way higher than they actually did (so they could pocket the extra cash), and sharing his honest opinion when lavish clothing or jewelry sent from admirers in the Middle East were too over-the-top for everyday wear.
Throughout the friendship, Zanganeh concealed his client’s identity, aiming to respect Jackson’s wish for discretion. After about two years, however, Jackson brought the topic up with Zanganeh himself.
“He was like, ‘You’ve always kept working — you’ve never mentioned to anybody that we work together,’” Zanganeh recalled to Inman. “And he said, ‘You’ve never leveraged that. Don’t you think it would be helpful for your business?’”
Zanganeh acknowledged that it would be lucrative to promote his association with an artist who won 13 Grammy Awards over the course of his career, and to date, has sold over 400 million records worldwide. Jackson obliged, mentioning “a friend” who was “just a young girl looking for a place” in Vegas.
Thinking she was probably one of Jackson’s nannies, Zanganeh said he’d appreciate the referral. The “young girl” was Britney Spears, and Zanganeh ended up brokering a property for the pop star while she was contracted to perform with Caesars Entertainment.
After that, the flood gates opened, and the high-net-worth and celebrity referrals flowed over the remainder of Jackson’s life. Over the course of their relationship, Zanganeh would broker three deals for the musician.
From Steve Wynn to Mariah Carey and more, Zanganeh developed valuable client relationships both directly and indirectly because of his attachment to Jackson.
Zanganeh credits Jackson with launching his real estate career and making him the successful agent he is today. Over 20 percent of Zanganeh’s business today is off-market and referral business, and he holds the record for most homes sold over $10 million, according to Greater Las Vegas MLS.
“Michael single-handedly changed my entire career,” Zanganeh told Inman. “He changed my life and made me one of the most successful Realtors in the entire state.”
