Today, the New York Times Real Estate section fills us in on "whisper listings" — listings so rare, so expensive, so downright sexy, that they are only whispered about. Wealthy sellers don't even bother to list their apartment, instead just relying on a shadowy network of "well-connected" agents to find a buyer through word-of-mouth.

The very apparent subtext in this piece is that there is something so very sexy about the idea of an apartment listing that can only be received orally.

“Sellers feel cocky. Sellers feel like they have the ball,” Brian K. Lewis, a real estate broker told the New York Times. "In an improving economy with no inventory, they have the asset people want.”

“We as brokers know everything is always for sale at a price," said broker Shaun Osher. With whisper listings apparently , everything is on the table.

“I said I would do it as long as they gave me everything I wanted,” Pamela Liebman, the chief executive of Corcoran, said of selling her Miami home through the whisper network.

Without the weird, sexy subtext, the article is mostly about how the super-wealthy don't even need to go through the hassle of listings and can instead rely on the very un-sexy network of other middle-aged wealthy people to spread the word. Kinda sexy in an Eyes Wide Shut way, I guess.