“Real Housewives” Star Outed for Faked Before-and-After Flip Photos
Before you post anything on Instagram, remember that the trolls are watching.
In the case of Joe Gorga of “Real Housewives of New Jersey” fame, your own neighbors are watching as well. The lesson Gorga is learning the hard way is one that every experienced real estate investor probably knows already: don’t fake your before-and-after flip photos! You will get caught.
Here’s what happened:
Gorga, whose sister is the infamous table-flipping Teresa Guidice and who is married to Melissa Gorga, a star of the hit Bravo television series “Real Housewives of New Jersey,” recently posted a dramatic (and now deleted) “before-and-after” set of photos to his Instagram account, bragging, “Look at this flip worth $1.9m. Took me 6 months to turn this around. Ripped off the roof & added to the second floor. I think I might move in.”
Unfortunately, it quickly became evident that the modest “before” home and the spacious and modern “after” home were not the same property or even located at the same address. The owner of the “after” house took to social media to correct the mistake and ask that the image of the property be taken down.
Gorga eventually responded that his social media manager had confused the projects and said he had served as a private lender on the property in the after photo. He also stated “I don’t flip houses. I buy properties. I don’t deal with homeowners…because I am a famous guy and people overreact.”
It certainly seems possible that Gorga’s misstep was a result of a new social media manager creating a “slick” graphic for Instagram that did not reflect reality. Gorga has noted that she is both “young” and “new” to working with him, so perhaps she really did not realize that the types of renovations she was describing would have required far more than just ripping off the roof, since the before house was a bi-level property and the after house is a colonial.
The lesson real estate investors should learn, however, is twofold.
- First of all, do not believe everything you see online! A lot of the so-called “experts” in this industry have no idea what they are doing and may be posting misleading information about how to invest in real estate.
- Second of all, be careful about what you post online. If you opt to trust someone with your social media management, make sure they understand enough about the industry to avoid making embarrassing mistakes.
Gorga is not only having to deal with an embarrassing situation; he also is likely to take a hit on sales of his new book, The Gorga Guide to Success, which deals with how the “real estate mogul” has “built an empire from the ground up.” Even if every word in his book is true, it is going to be hard to take him seriously after this snafu. Of course, not everyone takes the “real husbands” on Bravo’s shows seriously to begin with…
