He’s donned tiaras and swan costumes and re-enacted scenes from the Titanic and Frozen to sell houses. But the social worker turned Auckland agent Mingwei Qin is not just quirky, he’s listed close to $300m in property in one year.
When I first came across Mingwei Qin’s real estate videos on Instagram I was entranced, nay, bewitched. I watched as the porcelain-skinned, glossy-lipped Qin, a thoroughbred of a man, wearing a gold feathered tunic and enormous golden wings, strutted on a strip of red carpet that had been laid in the middle of a paddock. In a high, sing-song voice he trilled: “I’m a little, little tiny bird. I’m flying to try and find my home”. In the next moment – with a little help from AI – he ascended, wings flapping, into the sky to soar majestically over Orewa. “Orewa beach, Orewa school, bush,” he calls out soothingly. “I can see the supermarket; New World. Countdown.”
The video is bamboozling and original and now I want to buy a house in Orewa. I watch more.
Here Qin stands at the bow of a ship singing ‘My Heart Will Go On,’ with his colleague Jake embracing him from behind, the Jack to his Rose. Here he is, mincing through a garden in Red Beach wearing a tiara, a blue ruffled dress and knee-high white boots singing ‘Let It Go’, while firing snow out of his fingertips. Here he is, a sequinned mermaid lying on a Kwila deck.
Sometimes he’s a swan, a butterfly, a king, a queen. He talks and sings in both Mandarin and English and often includes subtitles.
Thanks to the 34-year-old Wallace Real Estate sales director, I have now spent hours virtually touring brick and tile homes on Auckland’s North Shore. And I’m far from the only one. Qin has a booming social media following, which is growing by the day; he has 15,000 following his WeChat channel, over 7,000 Instagram followers, 35,800 likes on TikTok, 4,000 followers on Xiaohongshu/Little Red Book. He has fans coming up to him in the street requesting selfies, and if the comments on his social media pages are anything to go by, his kooky marketing strategy is resonating.
“This is unhinged and I’m 100% here for it!”
“Love the creative approach, way better than the usual boring presentation.”
“QUEEN NEVER MISSES”
“The juxtaposition between the character arc and the Mise-en-scene demonstrates the existential crisis we all feel in the post truth era.”
“Fucking hell.”
“Some may question if this is going too far. I wonder if it hasn’t gone far enough.”
And his unorthodox approach is translating into sales. According to the 2025 OneRoof Power List, billed as “the definitive guide to the super agents responsible for selling the most real estate in New Zealand,” Qin ranked as the sixth biggest lister in the country in the year to August 2025. The total value of his listings during this period was $274,150,999.
We meet at the office of Wallace Real Estate North Shore (tagline: think. feel. sold.) Qin’s sartorial efforts do not disappoint. He is wearing a silky black shirt with large white flowers, silky black trousers and shiny black shoes. His skin is doughnut glazed, his eyebrows and teeth perfect. He is charming and delightful as he tells me a little of his background.
Qin, who lives in Browns Bay with his husband, moved here from China 11 years ago to do further study. He embarked on a Master of Social Work at the University of Auckland and after graduating, became a social worker. What was that like? “I quite enjoyed it actually, to be able to help people with lots of mental health issues. To empower people and let people get back to their own life, and… pursue the bright future, rather than just lay down doing nothing. So I think that job is a very good job.”
After three years working in mental health, Qin was ready for a change. His husband suggested he try real estate. “He told me I can get easy money. You just sit there, talk with people, wear couture and buy a luxury car… do the deal, earn the money.”
Qin says he discovered the reality to be quite different. “You have to work day and night, and sometimes you can’t close the deal. It’s stressful. And sometimes people call you at 12 o’clock and you have to answer the phone. It’s also a very competitive job, and a very intensive job. But later on, I got used to it.”
It was around June last year, in the midst of a very sluggish housing market, that Qin decided to jazz up the videos for his real estate listings. “You have to do something differently to grab people’s attention. My goal at that time was for my videos to help me to sell houses. I don’t want to promote myself because, actually, in real life I’m a little bit shy. I’m not like you see in the videos… I’m not a very talkative person in my real life. But this is my job.”
He’s grown to enjoy creating the videos, he says, because he likes entertaining his audience.
“Now, it’s not only for selling the houses, it’s for people’s life. Because I don’t want people just to every day have the same lifestyle, always boring, everything stays the same. I just keep doing [things] differently. I want people’s life [to be] more colourful.”
Qin plans to stay in real estate for another five years before pursuing his ultimate dream: to move to Milan and become a fashion designer. Along with singing, fashion is his passion. And while he doesn’t have time to design right now, he does collect clothing. “I know how to match the looks and put them together. I’ve got that sense. I follow so many fashion designer in different countries and you just get some sense of why they are so popular and famous, you can learn something from them, which will benefit my future for when I want to do my design.”
In the meantime, Qin is happy in New Zealand. “I love the culture, I love the people, I love the environment here.” And he doesn’t mind at all if fellow real estate agents copy him. “I think making things differently pushes the community and the industry to grow and be better.”
He also has some advice for the younger generation. “Don’t need to worry about people’s comments, no matter good or bad, just believe in yourself and keep going and be a good person, and you will be amazing.”
