We are the infrastructure that connects global markets.
The Problem We Solve
The Gap No One Was Closing
The world's most ambitious real estate operators share a common problem: they have outgrown the tools available to them.
International developers building landmark properties have no reliable route into the American buyer market. US brokers transacting at record levels have no infrastructure for the cross-border networks their careers require. And the industry's most powerful individuals — brokers who have surpassed $1 billion in career sales, and brokerages carrying three or more power brokers — have no private counsel equipped to build their brands across markets and protect their career narratives long-term.
We solve all three. Not through press releases. Through positioning.
Who We Are
Private Counsel for Real Estate Society
The SOCIETY Group is a brand architecture firm operating at the intersection of luxury real estate, global capital, and cultural influence.
We represent the developers, brokers, architects, and branded residences reshaping where wealth lives — and we connect them to the markets, the media, and the relationships that make those ambitions real.
Our campaigns have included the Playboy Mansion — which sold for $100 million, the highest residential sale in Los Angeles County at the time — and The One Bel Air, a 105,000-square-foot compound that sold at US auction for $141 million. International branded residence campaigns include The OWO Residences by Raffles in London and Mr. C Residences by ALTA Development in Dubai, generating leads, cross-border relationships, and documented sales.
We have done all of this from five offices. With one standard.
$3.5B+Luxury Real Estate Represented Globally
1,200+Press Placements Annually
5Cities. One Standard.
The Bridge Between Markets
We Connect What Others Cannot Reach
The most persistent challenge in luxury real estate is geography. An extraordinary development in London has no natural audience in New York without the right introduction.
A record-breaking broker in Los Angeles has no network in Dubai without the right architecture. Through UPFRONTS — our Wall Street Journal-sponsored conference — we created the forum where international developers meet qualified US buyers, and where US brokers build the cross-border relationships that define the next chapter of their careers.
The global market is not a destination. It is a conversation. We have been hosting that conversation for over a decade.
Five Cities. One Standard.
New York · Los Angeles London · Miami · Abu Dhabi
Not five offices in the conventional sense. Five embedded positions in the cities where off-market capital actually moves.
Where a West Village townhouse carries different gravity than a Tribeca penthouse. Where Mayfair and Belgravia speak in registers that Canary Wharf does not. Where the Brickell corridor and Palm Beach operate as separate universes with separate currencies of influence.
We understand every one of these markets from the inside. That specificity is not incidental. It is the service.
The SOCIETY Group
What We Built
We did not enter an existing market. We built the infrastructure that changed how it operates.
01 — UPFRONTS
UPFRONTS
The problem was simple and unsolved: international developers had nowhere to meet American buyers. Elite US brokers were transacting at record levels but operating in geographic isolation.
Produced by The SOCIETY Group and sponsored by The Wall Street Journal, UPFRONTS is an international real estate summit built specifically around cross-border connection. Developers from London, Dubai, Hong Kong, and beyond sit across from qualified US buyers and the American brokers who can move their assets.
US agents leave with relationships — not business cards — that open markets they have never accessed before. Four years running. Three continents. One conversation that keeps changing the market.
02 — Power Broker Awards
Power Broker Awards
Every broker in this industry has claimed to be number one. For the first time, we created a standard that could verify it.
The Hollywood Reporter's Power Broker Awards are press-verified recognition in luxury real estate — built because none existed. No nominations. No sponsorship packages. No self-submission. We cross-reference press records, closing archives, and independent market data.
Now in their fifth year. When a broker wins one, the industry knows it was earned.
The SOCIETY Group
Five Pillars
One firm. Four platforms. Each built to solve something specific. None of them incidental.
01
Property Society
Press strategy for the properties and people that shape the global real estate market.
We write the narrative — the specific cultural, architectural, and market truth that makes a development significant rather than simply interesting. Then we place it across the publications that define how wealth moves: the Wall Street Journal, Architectural Digest, the Financial Times, the Hollywood Reporter, the New York Times.
We have managed campaigns for properties that set city records and changed the conversation about what a home can be. The Playboy Mansion. The One Bel Air. The OWO Residences by Raffles, London. Mr. C Residences by ALTA Development, Dubai. The story, placed correctly, becomes part of the asset's value.
02
SCTY by SOCIETY Studios
Digital architecture for operators who understand that the right social presence is not about followers — it is about the rooms it opens.
We design feeds that read like old money. We write copy that implies access rather than advertising it. We build digital identities for brokers and developers that attract institutional capital and international attention without sacrificing the discretion that makes them worth following.
SCTY clients do not look like they are being marketed. They look like they belong.
03
Soirée Society
The events arm of The SOCIETY Group — and the engine behind UPFRONTS, the Power Broker Awards, and a year-round calendar of private dinners and invitation-only market sessions.
We do not produce events. We engineer rooms where decisions get made. Where international developers meet the US buyers they have spent years trying to reach. Where brokers form the cross-border relationships that define the next chapter of their practice. Every guest list is built with intention. Every agenda is structured to produce an outcome — not a photograph.
04
LIAISON
Private brokerage. Off-market residential representation. The register of old money applied to the present moment.
LIAISON represents high-value international properties and the individuals seeking them — clients for whom privacy is not a preference but a requirement, and for whom the provenance of a home matters as much as its floor plan. The aesthetic is Americana heritage: Ralph Lauren applied to real estate. The approach is entirely discreet. We do not advertise LIAISON's listings. We introduce them.
New York townhouses are among our signature representations — properties whose architectural provenance, neighbourhood position, and ownership history form as much of the offering as their square footage.
The SOCIETY Group
Approach
We do not begin with a press release. We begin with a question: what does this property — this person, this development — mean to the market it is entering?
The Distance Problem
Solving What Geography Breaks
The luxury real estate market is global in capital but local in culture. An extraordinary development in London faces a genuinely different challenge reaching New York buyers than reaching London ones.
Most firms address this problem generically. We address it specifically — because we are embedded in each market, not parachuted into them. We know the difference between how Mayfair speaks and how Marylebone speaks. We know why a West Village townhouse commands a different conversation than a Tribeca loft two miles south.
That specificity is not a detail. It is the entire methodology.
For International Developers
Entering the US Market
The American luxury real estate buyer is not reached through advertising.
They are not reached through advertising. They are reached through relationships — through the brokers, editors, and cultural figures who shape their understanding of what is worth their attention. We have spent over a decade cultivating those relationships. Through UPFRONTS and our press network, we give international developers direct access to the qualified US buyer pipeline — and the credibility that makes that introduction land.
A development in London, Dubai, or Hong Kong enters the American market with the relationships and credibility that make the right buyers pay attention. That groundwork is everything.
For US Brokers
Building Global Networks
The brokers at the top of this industry have already won their home market. The next chapter almost always involves an international dimension they have not yet built.
We have created the infrastructure for that expansion. UPFRONTS puts the most ambitious US brokers in the same room as international developers, capital sources, and fellow operators from five continents. Our press network ensures that as those relationships develop, the right people are watching.
A US broker who walks out of an UPFRONTS session with three new international relationships walks out with a different practice than the one they walked in with.
The Four Movements
How We Build
01 — Narrative
We identify the specific truth — architectural, cultural, transactional — that makes this client significant rather than merely successful. This is the foundation. Without it, everything is decoration.
02 — Verification
We cross-reference every claim against press archives, transaction records, and market intelligence. In an industry saturated with self-promotion, verification is the rarest and most valuable currency.
03 + 04 — Position & Archive
Press, digital, and event strategy aligned into one system. Every placement, transaction, and market moment catalogued. The record is often the most durable thing we produce.
The Standard
What We Will Not Do
We do not represent properties we cannot stand behind. We do not write claims we cannot verify. We do not place clients on rankings they have not earned.
These are not restrictions. They are the reason the work means something.
The Founder
Alexander Ali
Founder & Chief Executive Officer
Alexander Ali built The SOCIETY Group from a boutique Los Angeles publicity practice into the global real estate brand architecture firm it is today — creating the infrastructure, the events, and the standards that reshaped how the luxury real estate market operates worldwide.
He created UPFRONTS, an international real estate summit that connects developers from five continents with qualified US buyers, and the Hollywood Reporter's Power Broker Awards — press-verified recognition that did not exist in the industry before he built it. He holds a California real estate license and operates across five global markets.
His foundational conviction: press strategy alone is not enough. The firms and individuals who define markets do not wait to be covered. They build the rooms where the coverage begins.
Produced by The SOCIETY Group · Sponsored by The Wall Street Journal
The Room Where Global Real Estate Gets Done
International developers have extraordinary properties. American buyers have extraordinary capital. For years, no one introduced them properly.
What It Solves
The Problem That Started It
The global luxury real estate market has always had a geography problem. Capital is international. Culture is local.
A developer building landmark residences in London or Dubai faces a genuine barrier when approaching the American market — not a lack of product, but a lack of the right room to present it in. US brokers face the mirror image. The ambition exists. The access has not.
UPFRONTS exists to close that gap. Every edition is built around this purpose. Every guest list is constructed around it. Every agenda is shaped by it.
The Format
A Working Session. Not a Conference.
Produced by The SOCIETY Group and sponsored by The Wall Street Journal, UPFRONTS is an invitation-only annual summit convening the most influential developers, brokers, architects, and capital sources from five continents.
No rows of seats facing a stage. No cocktail-hour business cards. UPFRONTS is built as a working session where the agenda is set to produce outcomes, the guest list is built for capital concentration, and the conversation continues long after the room empties.
International developers leave with qualified introductions to the US market. US brokers leave with the cross-border relationships that will define the next decade of their practice.
Past Editions
The Record
UPFRONTS New YorkThe Architecture of Influence
UPFRONTS Los AngelesThe New Geography of Wealth
UPFRONTS CareyesThe Off-Market World
UPFRONTS LondonMay 2026
Next Edition
London. May 2026.
The fifth edition of UPFRONTS comes to London — which is not simply the next city on the list.
London is where old money and new capital have always negotiated: quietly, deliberately, on terms that rarely reach the press. Mayfair and Belgravia operate in registers that the rest of the world aspires to but cannot replicate.
The international developers and US buyers who convene there in May 2026 will do so in the city that, more than any other, understands what it means to move slowly and move right.
Attendance is by invitation. Enquiries are welcome.
Full event details, past editions, speaker alumni, and attendance applications live on the official UPFRONTS platform.
UPFRONTS is produced by The SOCIETY Group and sponsored by the Wall Street Journal. The summit convenes invitation-only gatherings of the world's leading real estate developers, brokers, and capital sources. If you believe you or your organisation belongs in the room, the application is the first step.
The SOCIETY Group — The Hollywood Reporter's Power Broker Awards
The Only Award You Cannot Buy Your Way Into
Five years. One standard. Verification over nomination.
Why We Built It
The Standard
The problem with real estate awards has always been the same: they are sold, not earned. Rankings are self-reported. Nominations are purchased.
The result is a market where self-promotion fills the space that verification should occupy. The Hollywood Reporter's Power Broker Awards were built as a correction to that.
We do not accept nominations. We verify — against press archives, against closing records, against the documented evidence of what each candidate actually did.
The Process
Four Months. No Shortcuts.
The annual review cycle opens each autumn. Our research team cross-references press placements from over forty publications, transaction archives, and market reporting across every geography in which we operate.
We assess four criteria without exception: documented transaction volume; market influence — defined strictly as the demonstrated capacity to move a market, not merely participate in one; press record; and contribution to the broader industry.
Finalists are reviewed by an independent editorial panel. Recipients are notified privately before any public announcement. The process takes four months. It is not expedited for anyone.
The Partnership
The Hollywood Reporter's Power Broker Awards
The decision to partner with the Hollywood Reporter was not incidental. It was the argument.
The most consequential luxury real estate market in the world operates at the intersection of capital, celebrity, and culture — and the Hollywood Reporter is the editorial institution that has owned that intersection for nearly a century.
When a Power Broker Award winner is recognised in the Hollywood Reporter, they are placed in a publication that the buyer class, the media class, and the cultural class all read. The award is permanent record. Searchable. Archived. It does not expire.
For Consideration
Next Cycle
The Hollywood Reporter's Power Broker Awards are now in their fifth year. What started as a corrective has held its standard.
The annual review cycle opens each autumn. If you believe an individual's contribution to the luxury real estate market merits consideration, contact the office. The research team reviews all correspondence.
We do not chase coverage. We build the stories that make coverage inevitable.
Over a decade of press work across the publications that shape how luxury real estate is understood. More than 1,200 placements annually.
Wall Street Journal
Hollywood Reporter
Architectural Digest
New York Times
Financial Times
Bloomberg
Robb Report
Mansion Global
The Times London
Forbes
Town & Country
Tatler
Vogue
The Real Deal
Inman
Curbed
Selected Campaigns
The Campaigns That Moved the Market
The Playboy Mansion
Holmby Hills, Los Angeles · $100,000,000 · Most Expensive Residential Sale in LA County History
A Gothic Tudor estate on five acres in Holmby Hills, carrying an address that required no introduction. We built the narrative that connected the sale to the cultural moment it represented — and placed it across entertainment, luxury, and financial media accordingly.
The One, Bel Air
Bel Air, Los Angeles · $141,000,000 · US Auction Record · 105,000 Square Feet
Designed by Paul McClean. 105,000 square feet on a Bel Air hilltop. The challenge was not generating coverage — it was sustaining a credible narrative through a development cycle that spanned nearly a decade. The auction sale at $141 million set a US record. The story held.
The OWO Residences by Raffles
London, UK · Branded Residence · Global Campaign
One of the most significant branded residence launches in European history — the former Old War Office on Whitehall, reimagined by Raffles. We executed a global campaign that connected the development's extraordinary architectural provenance with the international buyer class that understood exactly what a Whitehall address represents. The campaign generated qualified leads, cross-border broker relationships, and documented sales across US, Middle Eastern, and Asian markets.
Mr. C Residences by ALTA Development
Downtown Dubai, UAE · Branded Residence · International Campaign
ALTA Development's Mr. C Residences brought a brand synonymous with European glamour and the Cipriani family legacy into one of the most active luxury residential markets in the world. Our global campaign positioned the development within the US and international buyer pipeline — bridging the gap between a brand American buyers trust and a market they are actively entering. The result: qualified leads, relationship capital, and sales driven by cross-border strategy.
Media Enquiries
Press Office
Journalists and editors working on stories in luxury real estate, branded residences, international property markets, or the individuals shaping them are welcome to contact our press office directly.
What we do, how we work, and what makes us different — answered directly.
About the Firm
What is The SOCIETY Group?
The SOCIETY Group is a global real estate brand architecture firm founded by Alexander Ali. We operate across five cities — New York, Los Angeles, London, Miami, and Abu Dhabi — representing the developers, brokers, architects, and branded residences reshaping where wealth lives. Campaign work includes the Playboy Mansion, The One Bel Air, The OWO Residences by Raffles in London, and Mr. C Residences by ALTA Development in Downtown Dubai. We also created UPFRONTS and the Hollywood Reporter's Power Broker Awards.
Who founded The SOCIETY Group?
The SOCIETY Group was founded by Alexander Ali — a licensed California real estate professional and brand strategist who built the firm from a boutique Los Angeles publicity agency into a multi-market platform with proprietary industry infrastructure. Alexander created UPFRONTS and the Power Broker Awards — two platforms that have fundamentally reshaped how the global luxury real estate market connects and recognises achievement.
Where does The SOCIETY Group operate?
The SOCIETY Group operates across five cities: New York, Los Angeles, London, Miami, and Abu Dhabi. Each position is embedded in its market rather than parachuted into it. We understand the specific culture, media landscape, and capital dynamics of each city — from the West Village to Mayfair to the Brickell corridor — and that specificity is central to how we work.
How do I engage The SOCIETY Group?
The SOCIETY Group represents international developers, luxury brokerages, and individual power brokers who have surpassed $1 billion in career sales — as well as brokerages carrying three or more power brokers seeking private PR representation. Counsel is extended by referral or direct approach for projects that warrant a conversation. Contact us at info@societygrouppr.com.
For International Developers
How do international property developers reach US buyers?
The American luxury real estate buyer is not reached through advertising — they are reached through relationships. The SOCIETY Group provides international developers direct access to that ecosystem through three channels: UPFRONTS, our Wall Street Journal-sponsored conference where developers meet qualified US buyers directly; our press network across the publications the American buyer class reads; and our broker relationships in New York, Los Angeles, and Miami — the three primary US markets for international luxury residential investment.
What is UPFRONTS and how does it help international developers?
UPFRONTS is an invitation-only annual international real estate summit produced by The SOCIETY Group and sponsored by The Wall Street Journal. It is the only regular forum designed specifically to connect international developers with qualified US buyers and top-tier American brokers. Developers from London, Dubai, Hong Kong, and beyond sit in working sessions with the US operators who can actually move their assets. Four editions have run across New York, Los Angeles, Careyes Mexico, and London. Full details and attendance applications are available at upfrontsrealestate.com.
What types of international developments does The SOCIETY Group represent?
We represent branded residences, luxury residential developments, ultra-prime single assets, and off-market portfolios. Past campaigns have included The OWO Residences by Raffles in London and Mr. C Residences by ALTA Development in Downtown Dubai. We work with developers entering the US market for the first time and with established international operators deepening their American presence.
For US Brokers
How do top US real estate brokers build international networks?
Through UPFRONTS, US brokers are placed in working sessions with international developers, capital sources, and fellow operators from five continents. Through our press network, the relationships that develop are amplified in the right publications. A US broker who attends UPFRONTS leaves with international relationships that are genuinely structural — not business cards, but introductions that open markets.
What are the Power Broker Awards?
The Hollywood Reporter's Power Broker Awards are press-verified recognition in luxury real estate, now in their fifth year. They identify brokers who have demonstrably moved capital and changed markets — verified against press archives, closing records, and independent market data. There is no nomination process and no sponsorship pathway to recognition.
About Branded Residences
What is branded residence PR?
Branded residence PR is the strategy of connecting a hospitality-branded residential development with the international buyer class that can move it. The challenge is rarely the product. It is the introduction — connecting a development with the buyer class that understands what that address represents. Campaigns for The OWO Residences by Raffles in London and Mr. C Residences by ALTA Development in Dubai generated leads, cross-border relationships, and sales across US, Middle Eastern, and Asian markets.
The SOCIETY Group
Counsel Is By Referral.
We do not take on every enquiry. The work requires full commitment from both sides — and that is not possible at scale.
If you are building something that warrants a different kind of conversation — a development, a brokerage that has outgrown conventional PR, a branded residence that needs to cross borders — we would like to hear from you.
