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Perhaps money can buy you class.
Fredrik Eklund may have been selling multimillion-dollar listings for 20 years and snapping up fancy homes for himself for 15 years, but it wasn’t until about four years ago that he felt that he had achieved a different level of success.
It was then that the former reality television star started collecting blue-chip art including pieces from Jean-Michel Basquiat, Gustav Klimt, Willem de Kooning, Salvador Dalí and Keith Haring. Today his 100-plus-piece collection totals $15 million to $25 million and the paintings grace the walls of Eklund’s homes (he said it was “like putting an animal in a cage” to store art in storage), including his Manhattan lair.
“I think as this kid from Sweden, coming here and seeing all these beautiful, very expensive art collections, like 100 times bigger than [mine] — I’ve seen some of the wealthiest people’s homes — I never felt like I could be there, so maybe it was also buying myself a lot of class,” Eklund told The Post during an afternoon interview in his Greenwich Village apartment.
“It felt so distant, like the dream was too big or too far away,” he later elaborated.
From that point on, he said, “I just got very smitten.”
Collecting art is not that different from selling multimillion-dollar homes. Both require discretion, illiquid assets and value built on pedigree.
The “Million Dollar Listing New York” and “Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles” alum is now comfortable in both spheres.
A luxury real estate broker, Eklund and pal John Gomes co-lead the Eklund Gomes Team at Douglas Elliman, which has 100 people in 12 offices in five states. The team has achieved more than $30 billion in sales with a client roster including Jennifer Lopez, Leonardo DiCaprio, Justin Timberlake and Gigi Hadid.
“I can finally, hopefully get into the conversation with people, discuss art, which is very important in real estate,” Eklund, 49, said. “And I understand it.”
“The big expensive apartments are always sold to big collectors. So it is important to understand.”
Coloring outside the lines
Eklund’s collection blends old with new, men with women, and domestic with foreign across different mediums and periods.
He has pieces from Joan Miró; Elaine de Kooning, de Kooning’s wife; Gerhard Richter; Joan Mitchell; Tracy Emin; Rashid Johnson; and Rocco Ritchie, Madonna’s son.
Laura Footes’ oil on canvas, “Young Insomniac” hangs above Eklund’s bed. “She’s going in and out of sleep,” Eklund commented. “She has sleep issues. I don’t. I love to sleep.”
At his bedside he has a short stack of books: a 365-day devotional prayer book “Jesus Listens,” by Sarah Young, “People to be Loved” by Preston Sprinkle, “The Let Them Theory” by Mel Robbins, and a daily gratitude journal called “Choose Gratitude Change the World.”
Eklund was in Manhattan for a few nights, and after an interview with The Post planned to go to an art show showcasing work by Franco-Mexican designer Hugo Toro, who renovated and reimagined the Orient Express La Minerva in Rome.
“He’s someone that I would just say, I really want to work with,” Eklund said. “He’s the hottest interior designer, out of Paris.”
Now that he’s a real collector, Eklund routinely hits up art shows, like Art Basel in Miami. He acquired his “Untitled” Basquiat at Art Basel in 2025 for a reported $600,000.
Eklund traveled with other members of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, on organized trips to museums, private collections and artist studios.
“This year I went to São Paulo and Venice Biennale with them,” he said.
Eklund has felt connected to Andy Warhol, dating back to his time on “MDLNY,” when he once spent $9,000 to transform into the artist, even donning a prosthetic nose, for an open house meant to reflect a neighborhood’s artistic roots.
The broker sold one of Warhol’s 1986 screenprints of “Sitting Bull” at auction in October 2025 for $114,300, records show.
At home
Eklund signed the first contract in 64 University Place, a new development he marketed for developers Argo Real Estate and Bsafal Inc. He plunked down $3.35 million for a 1,383-square-foot, two-bedroom, 2.5-bathroom pad in 2024. The 11-story building’s 28 units sold out, off market, sight unseen within three weeks, he said. (Gomes picked up a unit on the seventh floor, as an investment property.)
Eklund, and husband, Zimbabwean abstract artist Derek Kaplan, and their 8-year-old twins, Milla and Freddy Jr., spend the majority of their time in Miami. (Kaplan was with Freddy in London at the time of the interview, and Milla was at Disney World with friends.)
They also have a place in Roxbury, Conn., an unfinished-home in Austin and a unit in the Shore Club in Miami Beach, which will be completed in about 18 months.
They recently bought an apartment in Paris, which Eklund touted on Instagram in April. The couple purchased a 13th-century chapel ruin in Tuscany, Italy, in 2025, which Eklund showcased on Instagram in July 2025.
That’s a wrap
Eklund helped launch Bravo’s “MDLNY” in 2012, and after more than a decade on that show — and a short stint on its Los Angeles spin-off — he called it quits. The 6’4” Swede was known for his trademark high kick, colorful socks and record-breaking sales.
He even met Kaplan while he was filming in Mykonos, the Greek island in the Cyclades. They married on air and even filmed their journey to parenthood with a surrogate.
“The more you share — the more vulnerable — the better the business,” he said.
Eklund is still in communication with the other New York cast members. He said he had just texted Ryan Serhant, who has an eponymous firm; he speaks to Luis Ortiz, who lives in Puerto Rico, “all the time,” and recently did a real estate deal with Corcoran’s Steve Gold.
“We grew up. The city grew up,” Eklund said. “The show was really the engine for our businesses.”
Today Eklund has shifted from doing individual home sales to handling new developments.
“We’re doing bigger buildings, bigger sellouts and more projects,” he said. “And it’s exciting because you change the skyline.”
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