Before Trixie Mattel opened the Trixie Motel, there was already a drag queen dominating the real estate scene. Austin’s own Ruby Dickulous has juggled comedy and her Drag Realty business for 14 years, helping Austinites find their dream homes. This June, she fulfilled a personal dream with an appearance on HGTV’s iconic show House Hunters.
“Trixie can’t be the only person building stuff,” Ruby reasons. “I was doing this before she even got on Drag Race.”
Real estate has been in Ruby’s life from a young age, as she recalls her mother being “a realtor, but not a good one” who often handled her family’s frequent relocations. “My dad is a lot like a gay man,” Ruby remarks. “He’s an alcoholic that moves to a new city every three years. So my mom was just like the realtor for us, and I always loved it.” Since securing her own real estate licence in 2011, she’s sold in the suburbs, Downtown, and even outside Austin in Leander and Round Rock. She acknowledges that the city has been fairly cost preventative as of late and not everyone can afford to buy. However, “the biggest problem is people that bought at the top of the market are kind of stuck upside down in their homes,” Ruby says. But the upside of other people’s misfortune – i.e. folks who’re selling because they’ve been laid off or can’t otherwise afford their mortgage – is that, in Ruby’s view, “it does open the door for buyers that have been saving their money for this moment … if you’ve been planning, now is a great time.”
Ruby’s no stranger to the long game of planning, as she’s been trying to develop drag real estate on the small screen for a while. Initial attempts leaned more into scripted comedy and sketch, but after all the offers at her door came from reality TV, her scope shifted. “The funniest part is I never wanted to do reality,” Ruby says. “But then, you know, no one else was beating down my door for a script. Over time my life became the reality, and then it kind of happened when it happened.” Describing her out-of-drag self as more reserved, once the wig is on Ruby the entertainer and comedian comes out whether on stage or on set. “I ham it up for the camera,” she says, “but I do that in drag anyway.” Her signature busty and glamourous drag style echoes her grandmother’s, who Ruby says “would wear a fur coat when it was 100 degrees outside.”
Ruby’s season 10 House Hunters episode, “The Queen of House Hunting in Austin, Texas,” aired in mid-May this year – marking the first ever appearance of a drag queen on the program. It continues to run through the end of Pride Month before moving over to streaming on HBOMax. Ruby Dickulous fans can find in-person events, her beauty brand, and recent real estate deals on her personal website, rubydickulous.com.
This article appears in June 27 • 2025.