OAKLAND — People in Oakland either love or hate Kenny “Fast Agent” Truong. You might have seen his bold, minimalist bus bench ads: “#FASTAGENT.”

If they are not attracting clients, they are attracting people who have ripped or tagged them up, then posted trophy photos on social media. Truong happily reposts the work of his “anti-fans.”

“You can’t buy that type of social marketing,” Truong said over lunch recently at Belly Uptown on San Pablo Avenue, where his Corvette Stingray was parked outside. “At the end of the day, I sell homes. They say I’m the cause of gentrification. That’s ludicrous.”

The flashy, 31-year-old agent for Climb Real Estate Group is not the biggest agent in town, but he’s perhaps the most polarizing one.

Although Truong moved at age 3 to Oakland and attended Oakland High School, the city’s activists consider him a prominent face of gentrified Oakland.

There have been attempts to take over his hashtag. An anti-eviction flier making the rounds features a pig in a top hat and suit wearing a “Fast Agent” name tag and exchanging money with a tattooed and mustachioed hipster wearing an Oaklandish T-shirt. One bus ad on Grand Avenue was torn up and others have been covered in graffiti, some with personal jabs at Truong.

The backlash has centered on Truong’s work in West Oakland, where he specializes in helping clients buy or sell homes in the 94607 Zip code. Truong said he sold 48 homes in 2015, a total value of $20 million. That includes lower-priced homes under $250,000, he said.

But affordable housing activists say that comes at a cost to longtime West Oakland residents struggling to stay in the neighborhood. A UC Berkeley study on urban displacement found that West Oakland, particularly the Lower Bottoms neighborhood close to the BART station, was undergoing rapid gentrification because of a high number of evictions and surging rents that are forcing out longtime residents.

Activist Cat Brooks, who bought a West Oakland house in 2011, has seen it firsthand.

“When I first was on my block, it was all black. Now, I say there’s two black folks left. I’m one of them,” she said.

She called Truong “an example of the worst extreme how bad gentrification can really get.”

In a business where Realtors shy away from confrontation, Truong has taken a different approach. Though mild-mannered in person, Truong responds to critics online, telling jokes, boasting about money or offering real estate advice. He claims it has grown his audience.

Earlier this year at Chinatown’s Shooting Star Cafe, Truong was seated next to a group of people discussing how to disrupt his hashtag. When they went to pay the check, they were told it was already taken care of. Truong, who was sitting next to them, paid for their meal and told the staff to tell them “Fast Agent” took care of the check.

“He thought he could grease us up,” said Pemex, a graffiti artist who was at the other table. “We refused to take payment because the movement is not for sale. I think he’s the face of the larger problem at hand that’s taking hold of Oakland.”

Pemex posted the receipt and one of Truong’s bus ads to Instagram, explaining why they did not accept his offer. Truong, in turn, reposted the image.

“He’s a phenomenon. He gets a lot of attention because of his marketing style,” said Marion Henon, past president of the Oakland-Berkeley Realtors Association. “Everybody’s heard of him. It’s kind of amazing because we hadn’t heard of him before.”

So far in 2016, Truong is off to his best start yet. He’s completed $18 million in home sales as his Jack London Square office adds Realtors. And he’s purchased some 90 new bus ads with a Golden State Warriors color scheme.

“It’s a vicious cycle,” Truong said. “The more they (damage my signs) the more I market myself, the more people know about it, the more homes I sell. They are helping me build my business.”

David DeBolt covers Oakland. Contact him at 510-208-6453. Follow him at Twitter.com/daviddebolt.