“In a world of nothing, of barren hills and cracked Earth and as soon as proud ocean straining by 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 lawyer..
The occasion, which payments itself because the “most prestigious and credible honors in actual property” is the business’s weirdest, most over-the-top awards ceremony. Right here, “elite professionals, companies and visionaries” collect for honors like Elevator Contractor of the 12 months and Buyer Service Excellence Award for Hearth 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 aspect of the business, and others for international gamers.
New York’s, in late April, was dedicated to business actual property, or “of us who’re both immediately 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 an internet phenomenon. A number of occasions every year, my X and LinkedIn feeds can be flooded first with crimson, 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 greatest expediter?
This system started on the crimson carpet inside Membership 101 at 101 Park Avenue.
Glamorous girls in sparkly attire 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 12 months, Expeditor of the 12 months, Tax Exemptions and Zoning Skilled of the 12 months, and Transferable Growth Rights Dealer of the 12 months.
“Each problem is definitely a present from God,” Dr. Ahsan Sattar of Emaret Capital Group, winner of the Multifamily Investor of the 12 months, stated as he obtained his mounted plaque.
Sattar and different honorees gave their speeches in entrance of 200 friends, hustlers and hopefuls linked to the awardees or occasion, together with husbands, wives, youngsters, mother and father, girlfriends, co-workers, Knakal and announcer George Shea, the true property PR maven and longtime host of Nathan’s Fourth of July Sizzling Canine Contest. Yalcin shot all of it on his iPhone.
Throwing occasions is an business 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 critical,” stated Leo Jacobs, 2025’s Chapter Lawyer of the 12 months and brother to this yr’s Contractor of the 12 months. “I don’t assume anybody who’s price their salt would say, 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 seem like 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 over the past decade.
About six years in the past, Yalcin found award reveals have been the final word schmooze-fest. He says he’s perfected the formulation.
There have to be at the very least 25 awards, however not more than 30. Lifetime achievement honorees — somebody like Francis Greenburger — assist appeal to business heavyweights. Mission-based awards carry out properly. So do “folks’s alternative” classes like Most Influential Particular person of the 12 months. The black-tie gown code spells magnificence.
The RED Awards are now 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 searching for recognition, he stated.
“It helps their enterprise, it helps their model,” he stated. “In a method, it’s like profitable an Academy Award.”
Yalcin stresses the awards are respectable. They aren’t a pay-for-play endeavor, and he doesn’t gather a price on the purposes. Particular person tickets to the occasion value $895 and a desk for ten is $8,700. A lot of the cash is produced from awardees or corporations shopping for tables.
He has a 20-person advisory board stuffed with business huge photographs like Kent Swig and Knakal.
“It’s all primarily based on benefit,” Yalcin stated.
Swig is the scion of an actual property dynasty and was as soon as certainly one of Downtown Manhattan’s largest workplace landlords. Then got here the nice monetary disaster. Swig misplaced a piece of his portfolio to foreclosures and was concerned in an notorious dispute together 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 12 months award.
At first, Swig stated he was “suspect” of the awards, however he shortly turned a believer. Swig stated he turned 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 possibly can go do nice issues for charities and also you get acknowledged, however that is your business.”
Yalcin has gotten emotional throughout awards shows. Previous honorees have included compliance architects, customized cabinetry design companies, demolition contractors, 1031 trade brokers, and, sure, elevator contractors.
“All of us use elevators. It’s one thing vital,” Yalcin stated. “So I feel any individual needed to acknowledge them and I’m glad we have been those that did it.”
The Horatio Alger award present
On the evening 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 cellphone.
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 together 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 immediately into the lens. His numerous ventures embrace automobile amassing, shopping for condemned properties, tv manufacturing and particular occasions promotion. Different previous companies embrace 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 by 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 true 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, completely new careers.
“I’ve met actually good people who I’ve established, not solely enterprise relationships, however friendships,” stated Jacobs.
In fact, awards can even perform as a spot to restore reputations.
In 2022, the RED Awards honored developer Josh Schuster with Comeback Developer of the 12 months, whilst Schuster confronted civil lawsuits from buyers. Three years later, federal prosecutors accused him of stealing greater than $10 million from buyers “to fund his way of life and repay earlier buyers in a Ponzi-like trend.” Earlier this yr, Schuster pleaded responsible to securities fraud.
“Typically 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.
Trade acceptance speeches are typically excruciating tropes about laborious work and hard challenges, with no point out of the distinguished 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 have 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 by laborious 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 residences, 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 gained the Skyscraper Growth of the 12 months for Sioni’s Casoni venture, spoke in regards to 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 Training and Wealth Creation in Business Actual Property for 25 Years, famous how huge of a second this was for him, “a excessive school-educated child from Cleveland, Ohio.”
The final winner, Actual Property Advocate of the 12 months Humberto Lopes, ranted in regards to 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 incredible evening.”
However the get together wasn’t over.
Motion stored interviewing winners and Yalcin glad-handed attendees. The ladies in sparkly attire snapped nonetheless extra selfies.
The mingling right here means one thing. On the RED Awards, an unrecognized title to the business can discover themselves chatting with Knakal, prime brokers and even business 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 international dignitaries. Jacobs transforms from a chapter lawyer into an business energy participant. Alan Motion Schneider performs the a part of a distressed actual property investor, broadcaster and social butterfly.
The RED Awards are a unusually honest spectacle — a company ballroom stuffed with folks being the particular person they dream they may very well be.
But when the occasion sequence 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 needs a trophy, they usually wish to obtain it in entrance of their family members.
The RED Awards presents the true 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 subsequent cease may very well be wherever. There’s a shiny new ballroom coming to the White Home, in spite of everything. Finest Actual Property Developer Turned Commander in Chief may very well be on this system. Price a shot.
