Ryan Serhant and his brokerage SERHANT. are riding a sugar high thanks to the success of “Owning Manhattan,” the Netflix show that followed Serhant and his agents around New York as they shopped some of the priciest properties in the city. The show has been renewed for a second season and Serhant says it will begin filming in a few weeks.
HousingWire real estate reporter Jeff Andrews sat down with Serhant to talk about the show, how it changed his life and the brokerage, and what he sees coming in the industry following the commision settlement by the National Association of Realtors (NAR).
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Ryan Serhant
Jeff Andrews: How has your life changed since “Owning Manhattan” became a hit? You’ve been on TV for a number of years, but I imagine it hits a little harder when it’s your company and you are the star.
Ryan Serhant: My life changed in 2010 when Andy Cohen and the executives at Bravo picked me to be one of three people to be on a real estate reality television show that everyone told me not to do. That show was called “Million Dollar Listing New York.” It enabled me to open up any door I wanted to. I still had to go close it as a salesperson, but I was able to get into any door I wanted to.
My life is now definitely ‘before and after’ Netflix. I have never experienced the lead flow, the brand awareness, the fans on the street that I’ve experienced in the last two months. I’m in SoHo right now at my office and I am looking outside my window. To the left, there’s a couple taking a photo of our building. To the right, there’s tourists taking one big family selfie of themselves in front of a building. It’s been all day, every day since the beginning of July.
As a producer of this one and being so prominently featured, it’s like a baby of mine. It’s my creative direction, my agents, all my properties, my company, my building, my base. Like, if it bombed, it was going to be “Ryan bombs,” you know, and so to see it be so critically acclaimed, it’s just like … that was a good day. I wrote it in my journal. Like, don’t ever forget this day. You’re going to have bad days going forward, but just remember that this day did happen.
JA: You say a lot of people told you not to do “Million Dollar Listing New York” and you did it anyway. And you said in the first episode of “Owning Manhattan” that a lot of people told you not to start SERHANT., and you did it anyway. Is this a personality trait of yours? People telling you not to do things and you doing it anyway?
RS: I think your gut instinct is evolutionary. We used to look out at an open field and your gut would say, “Don’t go there because there’s going to be lions and tigers and bears and they’re going to kill you.” You look at the same open landscape and your gut says they’re not there anymore. You have to take big swings.
I’d rather regret the things I did than the things I never tried. What’s the worst that’s going to happen if you do a show? No one likes it? It airs for one season? It’s the same thing with starting my company. Everyone said don’t do it, I think out of protection, but what’s the worst that can happen? I just go back to doing what I was doing before. As long as you swing so hard that your chances of success are pretty strong, then you’re going to beat everybody else who steps up to the plate.
JA: What’s been the impact of the show on the business?
RS: Our listing traffic increased by hundreds of percent to every listing that we have for all SERHANT. agents. Our website traffic has increased by thousands of percent. At this point, we’ve gained, I think, 1.3 million followers across social accounts just in the last couple months.
SERHANT. is a brokerage as a service, kind of in the same way you look at software as a service. We provide marketing support, brand support, lead support and operational support to all of our markets. Since we started filming season one, we’ve since opened in seven additional states outside of New York.
I think you saw on episode one of season one, I talk about having 300 agents at SERHANT. We’re now at, I think, just over 700 and we’re growing fast. My plan is to open 10 markets between now and the end of 2025. Could be more, it could be less, but that’s my goal. We have an incredible product called S.MPLE that we’re launching on Sept. 20. That is kind of an AI-empowered back office for salespeople, so it’s the least sexy thing that I do. I’m excited to continue selling and breaking as many records as we can.
JA: Is there something specific you look for in agents to bring on board other than just numbers? I started following a lot of you on Instagram, and everybody at the company has a strong personal brand. And they’re very stylish. They seem like little versions of you.
RS: That’s hilarious. The way I build this company is following the four Ps — purpose, people, product and profits. You go in that order. And so, everybody who’s here has to have a purpose that we align with. If it’s just to make money, this is not the place for you. If it’s just to be on Instagram, this is 100% not the right place for you.
We turn down more wannabe real estate influencers than anything. Our in-house production studio is there as support. Our agents skew younger because we use a significant amount of technology, and we fund tools and resources. We’re mostly a cloud-based brokerage, and so we just cater more toward a younger audience that understands that and can operate that way.
I think leadership trickles down from the top. I focus on personal brand as a form of lead gen, especially in a post-NAR settlement world. You want to represent everybody on every deal forever, but in a world that’s getting more and more focused on sell-side optimization, how do you become the one who sells and not just the one who represents?
Our firm is best positioned for that because we have significant organic lead flow. We have hundreds of inbound, good real estate agents every day. For me, recruitment is not a matter of selection. It’s a process of elimination and feeling out who’s right for us and who will be good champions of our purpose, not just our brand.
JA: Let’s say I decide to quit being a journalist and become a real estate agent, and my goal is to get to SERHANT. What advice would you give me as I’m just getting in the business and want to eventually work with you?
RS: We take on newer agents as apprentices. You can’t come to SERHANT to be a brand-new agent by yourself. You’re a liability to yourself and you’re a liability to others, so you have to be an apprentice on a team. So, you can join a team, and a lot of teams have different levels of apprenticeship, but usually it’s two years as an apprentice under a smaller commission split and/or you do a certain number of deals.
That’s not to say we don’t have 22-year-olds coming over and doing $50 million in sales in their first year — because we definitely do. But we are also kind of built for the average, not just the one-offs. We typically don’t take principal agents who’ve been in the business for less than five years, but we’re always open to conversations. You know, things move fast these days.
JA: We are in a brave new world as of Aug. 17 with the new rules related to the NAR settlement taking effect. How do you see the brokerage space changing and what are you doing to prepare for it?
RS: I think there’s a flight to quality for service, let alone transparency. I believe that there will only be a few big brands at the end of the day, because there will just be mass consolidation. There’s just too much pressure now on earnings, commissions, revenue and leads. And I think the strongest brands that provide the greatest service for the lowest dollar amount will win.
Right now, you have a lot of different brands out there in the brokerage space who in my mind don’t know what they are. They’re either really high cost and really high service, or they’re really low cost and really low service. Those two work for some, but there are also some that are somewhere in the middle, which works for no one. Those brands are short-lived.
I think that’s where you’re seeing a lot of consolidation, especially as you start to zoom in hyperlocal. The new era of brokerage is upon us, and it is an agent choice era. That’s the paradigm that I set out to build for myself with SERHANT. four years ago because I knew it was coming.
JA: What do you mean by ‘agent choice era’?
RS: Meaning you go to Amazon.com, whether you want socks or you want to buy a house, right? There’s one service, one platform, for your choice of what you want to consume. And I think most brands out there right now are one-note brands, which is tough on a diversified consumer base.
We have incredible multifamily teams, commercial teams, new construction teams, high net worth teams, beach teams, golf teams. We are providing the best brokerage as a service for pro-choice agents, and I don’t mean that in terms of birth control. I mean that in terms of the agent who wants to choose how they want to build their business. I don’t know another place where they can do it as freely as they can here.
JA: Is there anything you are advising your agents to do moving forward in light of the settlement?
RS: First and foremost, you have to have a clear understanding of what your value proposition is to buyers that you want to work with. You have to understand your local rules and regulations within your brokerage and your MLS. Why should people work with you instead of him or her, or just going to Zillow?
You’ve got to be able to articulate that really, really clearly. I think most people look at us as a sell-side firm, right? I think our pitch to sellers is easy. We can put your listing in front of more eyeballs than any other firm combined times 150, and we can do it in the click of a button.
And if you’re going to pay a real estate agent, then why not work with the one that’s going to get your house in front of more qualified eyeballs than anybody else? And on the buy side, how can you have access to the most inventory? I think that the rule changes, regardless of the MLS, are going to push more people to shop quietly.