Always be selling, and always be closing. Those timeless phrases still apply to sales and real estate in this day and age. Together they basically sum up the Swedish-born real estate broker.
Fredrik Eklund’s estimated net worth is $30 million as of 2023. This makes him the joint-third richest agent on Million Dollar Listing, behind Josh Flagg and Josh Altman. He’s had a fascinating career with several intriguing side stops, so let’s dive right in and see what he’s all about.
Early Days
He was born in Sweden in 1977 to a father who was an economist at a prominent Swedish bank. Fredrik showed early on what he was all about, putting on family shows in the living room at the age of four and charging five kroners for the privilege of watching him. Family ties, indeed!
Young Fredrik then surfaced as an exchange student in America, and when he saw the bright lights of New York, everything changed for him. He vowed to eventually live there, but first he studied at the Stockholm School of Economics and founded a financial newspaper, although he never graduated.
Eklund’s first business venture was a company called Humany that he started with his father and former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt. Fredrik became CEO of the company at the age of 23, and he did indeed move to New York, where he also started a music production company called Cave Entertainment.
The Money Game
Fast forward to 2010, when Eklund was involved in real estate in a big way. He was the managing director at two major New York real estate firms, and between the two he sold over $5 billion in residential properties.
Eklund now runs his own brokerage firm but he has also maintained his European roots. He owns a high-end residential brokerage that has over 50 employees.
His client list is to die for – it includes names like Jennifer Lopez, John Legend, Matthew Broderick, Daniel Craig and Sarah Jessica Parker, among others.
On January 24th 2022, Fredrik sadly announced he was leaving Million Dollar Listing after 11 seasons. Elkund is still an agent with Douglas Elliman but now is the right time to step out of the spotlight and spend more time with his young family.
Getting Personal
Eklund’s personal life has featured some interesting twists and turns. Before moving to New York he did a brief stint in adult entertainment, going by the pseudonym of Tag Eriksson. He said he only dabbled for a total of a week spread out over several months, but that phase of his “career” also led to a role in the 2003 parody of “The Ring” that was not-so-enticingly called “The Hole.”
Eklund does seem to have straightened out that part of life. He married artist Derek Kaplan in 2013, and for a time the couple lived in New York, although they now live in tony Connecticut after purchasing a mansion in the town of Roxbury.
They’ve become parents as well, with a pair of twins, daughter Milla and son Fredrik Jr. arriving via a surrogate. Eklund has also dabbled in the wine business, launching his personal brand, High-Kick, which is sold in six countries, and his rose is now a big seller in Sweden as well.
Eklund is still relatively young, so it’ll be interesting to see if he has any major moves that go beyond getting rich and selling houses.
