I posed naked for Playboy before I sold mansions on Selling Sunset - I don't regret it, says Heather

CLATTERING around mansions in designer heels is all in a days work for Heather Rae Young, who sells some of Los Angeles swankiest homes for a living. But there is one superpad in the city which the star of Netflix reality show Selling Sunset is more familiar with than her glam colleagues the Playboy

CLATTERING around mansions in designer heels is all in a day’s work for Heather Rae Young, who sells some of Los Angeles’ swankiest homes for a living.

But there is one superpad in the city which the star of Netflix reality show Selling Sunset is more familiar with than her glam colleagues — the Playboy mansion.

Before becoming an estate agent, Heather was a Playmate for the iconic magazine, and does not for a minute regret stripping fully nude for it.

In an interview with The Sun, she says: “It catapulted my career, it changed my life, it was the most defining moment in my life.”

Endless bitching

It is ten years since Heather, now 34, cast off her kit for the sexy mag and her life has done a complete 180-degree turn because now she is a high-flying estate agent and parent to stepdaughter Taylor, 11, and stepson Brayden, six.

She admits: “I’m still trying to figure out how I’m going to tell the kids I did Playboy.”

But she has swapped all that for Selling Sunset. Charting the professional and personal lives of workers at high-end LA real estate firm the Oppenheim Group, it is currently the streaming service’s No1 hit, topping the charts in the UK and 18 other countries.

Now into its fourth series, which began streaming last week, it has viewers gripped with its heady mix of property porn and a glam female agents who are not afraid to get their claws out.

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Dressed in eye-popping designer clobber, the women of the Oppenheim Group are filmed selling houses, dealing with the dramas in their personal lives — and fighting with each other, of course.

Along with self-proclaimed boss b**** Christine Quinn, soap actress turned agent Chrishell Stause, and emotional newlywed Mary Fitzgerald, Heather is one of the show’s stars.

Heather insists there is nothing manufactured about the women’s endless bitching. She says: “Everything you see — all the drama, all the fighting — that’s all real.

“A lot of people think, oh, maybe it’s not because it is so catty and dramatic. But we’re in a high-pressure industry, in a high-pressure job and it happens.”

Heather’s previous life posing fully nude for Playboy, and claiming the coveted centrefold gig in February 2010, may not seem a natural way in to property sales. But she found she had a natural talent for real estate. Within her first four months on the job, she had sold nine million dollars worth of property.

Having bared all for Playboy, she not fazed by the reality show cameras.
She adds: “Modelling and acting transitioned me into real estate. I’ve met a lot of contacts through my modelling/acting career — a lot of wealthy people, celebrities.

Modelling and acting transitioned me into real estate. I’ve met a lot of contacts through my modelling/acting career — a lot of wealthy people, celebrities.

Heather Rae Young

“I channelled that into real estate and using my contacts. I sold over nine million dollars’ worth of real estate within my first four months.

“I don’t regret anything I’ve ever done. I’m proud of my life. Everything I’ve done has got me to where I am today.”

Heather was raised in the small California town of Running Springs but always had her sights set on bigger things. She studied acting for four years and had some small movie parts including in 2013 comedy The Internship alongside Vince Vaughn, but then found it was modelling that let her travel the world.

Selling Sunset viewers saw her struggle with a long-distance relationship which later crumbled before she began dating her now husband, US property Tycoon Tarek El Moussa.

The pair were engaged just over a year after they met in 2018 at a Fourth of July American Independence yacht party then started living together just four days after making their romance official.

She initially turned down his offer of drinks and a trip to Paris before agreeing to go on a date with him. Tarek, 40, is a huge TV star in his own right in America thanks to another property show, Flipping 101.

Lavish wedding

Heather, who now goes by the surname El Moussa, is happy being stepmum to Tarek’s kids Taylor and Brayden — but is not sure Taylor should follow in her Playboy footsteps.

She says: “That would be a Daddy question, for sure. I’m sure Daddy would say no, but, um, you know, Taylor is such an entertainer. She is meant to be on TV. She filmed with me for Selling Sunset and she films with me and Tarek for Flipping 101. She’ll absolutely be a model but not doing what I did.”

Heather and Tarek tied the knot in October in a lavish ceremony that will be shown on Discovery + as Tarek & Heather: The Big I Do on December 16.

Heather reckons she was “meant to be a wife.” She says: “I never even questioned taking Tarek’s last name. It solidifies our love and our relationship, plus it helps that my husband has a famous last name too. I’m proud to be an El Moussa.” But there was one person very much not invited to their nuptials — Heather’s co-star Christine Quinn.

Nearly 6ft, and possessor of the most outrageous luxury wardrobe on the show, Christine is the unapologetic pantomime villain of the agency, never afraid to slap down her colleagues with savage one-liners.

Dallas-born Christine had a tough upbringing — admitting she went to school “with people that were members of gangs, with girls that were being trafficked, with girls that were prostitutes” and says: “I would see their pimps pick them up after school.”

It solidifies our love and our relationship, plus it helps that my husband has a famous last name too. I’m proud to be an El Moussa.

Heather Rae Young

She herself was briefly jailed for marijuana possession at 17 before trying her hand at acting, like Heather, and ultimately ending up at the Oppenheim Group. But as good as she is at selling houses, Christine is even better at winding up her fellow agents.

While she shared an early friendship with Heather, the two fell out when Christine branded Heather’s relationship with Tarek “ridiculous” and suggested he had set up pap shots.

Heather sighs: “I am big on loyalty, I’m big on friendships and trust, and I do not trust her. I don’t think she’s a loyal person.” At the beginning of season four, viewers will see Christine heavily pregnant — then as a mum.

It comes after the last series of Selling Sunset saw her marry tech entrepreneur Christian Richard, 42, in a million-dollar ceremony complete with black swans, gilded thrones and a wedding cake that “bled” in the last season.

But she will be back to work within a week of giving birth to baby Christian in May this year. Not that she will be welcomed back by her colleagues, who brand everything she says as lies. But Heather insists that despite the office feuds, the agency really is a positive place to work.

She says: “Most of us are very supportive of each other, we try and lift each other up. There is obviously fighting but we’re not mean for the sake of it.

Most of us are very supportive of each other, we try and lift each other up. There is obviously fighting but we’re not mean for the sake of it.

Heather Rae Young


“Mostly things tend to get sorted out after they get heated.

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“We’re all very strong, independent women with our own views which can cause issues.”

One woman’s heated issues are another’s vicious backstabbing — but whatever you like to call it, one things is for sure — the viewers absolutely love it.

Inside Tarek and Heather's wedding featuring flower arches and walls of champagne

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