RHONJ’s Joe Gorga accused of ‘house flipping’ errors on Instagram
Real Housewives of New Jersey husband Joe Gorga is all over social media after he was accused by Page Six of using other people’s “house flip” pictures for his real estate business. The real estate developer has often posted ‘house flip’ before-and-after pics during the past two years. However, fans have been left wondering what’s […]
Real Housewives of New Jersey husband Joe Gorga is all over social media after he was accused by Page Six of using other people’s “house flip” pictures for his real estate business.
The real estate developer has often posted ‘house flip’ before-and-after pics during the past two years. However, fans have been left wondering what’s going on after Page Six claimed it had uncovered errors in Gorga’s Instagram posts.
Read on to find out more about the ‘house flip’ allegations and what Joe had to say.
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What is ‘house flipping’ and what are the allegations?
Joe often posts stunning pictures of properties he has flipped or had design involvement in. House flipping is when a real estate investor buys houses and sells them for profit. For a house to be considered a ‘flip’, it must be bought with the intention to quickly resell.
Page Six put its investigation hat on and alleged there were errors in some of Gorga’s posts.
On January 11th, Joe posted a photo of a modern and stylish kitchen he captioned: “Another flip. This house sold for 759,000.00 #growwithgorga.”
However, Page Six alleges the same image was posted on Design Depot’s Instagram more than four years ago. It says the image was taken by photographer Nadav Havakook and Page Six spoke to him about the photo. Havakook told the publication:
[Joe] definitely did not have permission to use my images. The photoshoot was for my client Design Depot.
Nadav Havakook, Page Six
Awkward!
President of the company responds
Page Six also spoke to Ethan Levy, president of Design Depot. Let’s just say he wasn’t too impressed by the revelation.
Levy claimed Gorga had nothing to do with the project, including any part of the construction or design process. Levy told Page Six:
I personally designed that kitchen myself and everything else in the house for one of our clients – who is a developer – and he sold that house for, I believe, $1.5 million, so there’s no way that house sold for $759,000.
Ethan Levy, Page Six
Of course Twitter had to get involved to poke fun at the claims:
Social media manager blamed for mistake
Although Gorga’s representatives declined to speak to Page Six, Joe has blamed a previous error on his Instagram on a social media manager, who has not been named.
Page Six opened its investigation after Caley Svensson, of Park Ridge, New Jersey, claimed her friend shared a picture of her house on Instagram that Joe had posted. In response, Svensson told the publication:
It’s clearly my house, I messaged [Gorga] on the post to please remove it, but he never responded. I DMed him as well and he never responded either.
Caley Svensson
Page Six said it confirmed through online property records that Caley and husband Erik Svensson were the owners of the home, which appears to be the same as Joe’s “after” photo.
Gorga blaming the incident on a social media manager, claiming they “made a mistake”. However, he said he had some involvement in the project as he acted as a “private lender”.
Erik Svensson told Page Six he accepted Gorga’s explanation their house was mistakenly posted as a “flip”.
Reality Titbit has reached out to Joe Gorga for comment.
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