Ryan Serhant is no stranger to success — or the spotlight.
After early stints as a daytime soap opera actor and even a hand model, Serhant found stardom in 2012 as the breakout broker on Bravo’s “Million Dollar Listing New York,” and ultimately went on to star on spinoff shows like “Sell It Like Serhant” and “Ryan’s Wedding.”
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Throughout the next decade, Serhant cemented a name for himself as one of the world’s most famous residential real estate brokers, closing nearly $10 billion in sales throughout the course of his career for firms like Nest Seekers International, Town Residential and Brown Harris Stevens.
Serhant eventually took the reins himself and started his own eponymous company in 2020. And Netflix took notice — Serhant got his very own show with “Owning Manhattan,” which tracks the firm’s agents and its biggest listings (and the drama that follows).
Headquartered in 15,000 square feet at SoHo’s 372 West Broadway, Serhant has quickly become a top name in New York City residential real estate, with $4 billion in inventory and nearly 50 new development projects in 2024 alone.
And it’s not just residential. In addition to sales of ultra-luxury residential condos, “Owning Manhattan” shows the firm’s first foray into commercial real estate with sales of office and mixed-use buildings across the city.
In its biggest commercial deal, Serhant’s team sold the four-story, mixed-use building at West Chelsea’s 548 West 22nd Street for $50.5 million just before the new year.
Serhant said he plans to continue that momentum and present his firm as a “unique choice” for commercial clients, as his firm has “more qualified eyeballs all over the world than any commercial real estate brokerage combined.”
With Season 2 of “Owning Manhattan” likely to premiere sometime this year, it seems like Serhant will add on even more eyeballs to its already burgeoning firm. Commercial Observer caught up with the man behind it in late January to discuss his career and future plans.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Commercial Observer: So, obviously, a lot of people have followed your transformation from being a reality star on “Million Dollar Listing” to starting your own business at Serhant and Netflix’s “Owning Manhattan.” But how did you get started in real estate? Do you remember your first deal?
Ryan Serhant: I got started in 2000, but I got my license in 2008. I did rentals in Manhattan’s Koreatown, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, and I did my first sale in 2009. I got my first new development building in 2010, and I was cast on “Million Dollar Listing New York” in 2010, which changed my life. I’ve been building ever since.
You’ve had a bit of an acting career as well. Did you always know you wanted to be on TV, and what do your friends and family say about the show?
I grew up wanting to do TV. When I moved to New York City in 2006 after I graduated college, I did the soap opera “As the World Turns.” I was doing theater. … It was my talent. It wasn’t my job. And it was really hard to turn into a job, which is why I got into real estate, because I ran out of money.
My mom watches the show. My dad doesn’t. Reality TV is not his thing. They’ve always sort of been in the mind of, “If you work hard and you’re a really good person and you think it’s good for your business and for your livelihood, then do it. But, if any of those start to falter, then we’re going to have problems at Thanksgiving.” So that was kind of the conversation, but “Million Dollar Listing” changed my life.
I then did three spinoff shows at Bravo: “Sell It Like Serhant,” “Ryan’s Wedding,” “Ryan’s Renovation.” And, then, when we started Serhant in 2020, I went to Netflix and said, “Let’s do a show together.” And we created “Owning Manhattan.” That came out last year, and we’re shooting Season Two right now. My parents like “Owning Manhattan” a lot better.
Why did you decide to live in Brooklyn as opposed to Manhattan, since “Owning Manhattan” largely focuses there?
I bought our house in 2018, I think. I had just gotten married. I knew we were going to have kids. I knew I wanted to have a bigger house or apartment. I wasn’t necessarily looking for a townhouse and I wasn’t necessarily looking to be in Brooklyn, but some of our businesses are in Brooklyn, we’re in Brooklyn all the time, and I’m driving through Brooklyn to get to both airports all the time. And there’s just good value.
I had a listing, which is the house I live in, and the seller needed to sell, and I was able to get a really, really good deal on it that I ordinarily wouldn’t have been able to get. I was like, “Hey, I think I’ll let the deal decide where we get to live, and we can do a renovation and have fun, and we’ll build for the future.” We did that in 2018, and moved in in 2022 because COVID-19 threw us, obviously.
Being on reality TV, what hurdles did you not see coming when it comes to starting your own company?
Well, one, ignorance is bliss until it gets expensive. There’s a lot that I didn’t anticipate, because if I had overly anticipated every single thing, I would have had what a lot of our buyers have, which is analysis paralysis, which I didn’t want. Analysis paralysis keeps me from making decisions. Life is short, right? So I wanted to make sure that we just move forward regardless. And, if there’s a will, there’s a way.
I think with the cost of certain things, I didn’t realize how ridiculous legal expenses were going to be, or insurance, or how starting a business is not necessarily one big expense. It’s 10,000 little expenses that add up to a big expense. Defining your mission and your value prop is incredibly important. What does it mean to go from being a real estate broker to being a CEO? What does it mean to be the decider and make decisions? Am I a good leader, a good manager, both, or just one?
So there was a lot of personal discovery I had to do the first couple years that I think was unexpected, but obviously I had to go through it.
Does having a reality TV show make it harder to get deals across the table since it’s so public? Or has it actually helped if there’s buyers who want that kind of visibility?
The only people who go on TV are people who sign up to go on TV. I mean, TV changed my life. There’s 8 billion people on this planet — the people that don’t want to work with us because we’re on TV, I’ll never even know who they were. And the people who do want to work with us because we’re on TV is 1,000 percent more than anyone who ever didn’t want to work with us.
By the end of this year, we’ll have 10 million direct followers and subscribers across social accounts, and it doesn’t include the 300 million eyeballs Netflix has. There is no other residential real estate brokerage that has the reach that we have. And, if you’re going to hire a residential real estate agent or commercial — because we do commercial now, too — and you’re going to pay a commission, why not pay it to the firm that can put your property in front of more qualified eyeballs than anybody for the same exact cost? And, so, our ability to take market share — I don’t know if I’d be able to do it without the exposure that we have.
How big is Serhant now?
There’s four businesses here. The brokerage is in eight states. We just crossed 1,000 agents at the end of last year, and I think we have 110 employees. SellIt.com is our sales training business, that’s a big business. We have 38,000 members in 131 countries, and it has a staff of 20. The production studio that creates the Netflix show and all of our social content is called Serhant Studios with a staff of 30. That produces all of that organic content and all the social. And then S.mple is a big team as well, and that’s all the tech and the AI service.
So how do all of those different business lines fit together under one Serhant brand?
Well, they’re all me, and they all sit under Serhant.Technologies, and they’re all sales enablement. That’s what our business is. We enable agents to sell homes and buildings, we enable customers to buy homes and buildings. We enable sales people to learn about sales in Mumbai and Sydney. We enable properties and products to increase lead flow and pipeline due to organic content.
Serhant Studios is a content-to-community-to-commerce business. The books, the podcast and the TV show are all in the war for attention. Especially in real estate, in 2013 when Instagram was invented, the product moved from your skill set to your ability to gain attention for your properties and for your personal brand. So all of that just helps brand awareness.
Is commercial real estate an area you’re trying to focus on more, and is it hard to get into?
It’s definitely hard to get into, much harder to get into than residential. It’s far more Rolodex-based. You need to know people that are looking to buy buildings, lease offices, do commercial spaces. We’ve been growing so much on the commercial side over the past 12 months, really. We’ll probably do about $1 billion in 2025 in pure commercial transactions as a residential firm, which is, like, totally bonkers, because the market and the marketplace is currently being consolidated. You see that. Small firms are being absorbed by big firms, medium firms are absorbing smaller firms.
And the difference between how you sell a residential townhouse and a multifamily building or garage has kind of become a little bit blurred, especially in a city like New York. We sold 548 West 22nd Street on Dec. 31 for $50 million. In a traditional core commercial brokerage, you’re not even selling the asset, you’re selling a financial instrument. You’re selling a cap rate, right? You’re looking for that institutional purchaser, even if the purchaser is just Bob, who wants to buy the building. You’ve got a pro forma, you’ve got your index of purchasers who purchase these types of assets, your financial adviser for commercial real estate.
For us, we sell brand, we sell story, we sell value appreciation. That building we sold at an incredible premium because of how we sell residential property and the fact that we can put buildings in front of more qualified eyeballs all over the world than any commercial real estate brokerage combined. So that’s why so many commercial agents are coming to us that want to join us, that want to work here, because they’re seeing that the writing’s on the wall for their industry and we’re a unique choice for their clients.
How big is Serhant’s commercial team now?
We have about 10 people in Manhattan, an additional 10 in Florida. We have a couple commercial agents now in every state we operate in, so maybe that’s 50 or 60 strictly commercial agents.
You’re from Texas — have you ever tried to get into real estate there?
Our president, Josh Team, is based in Dallas. A lot of my family is between Dallas, Houston and Austin, and we will eventually go to Texas. We’re just analyzing all markets that make sense for our model right now.
Serhant is quickly becoming a huge brand. Do you think you’ll ever move into the development game, or will we see any Serhant-branded buildings?
Never say never. I know what I’m good at, and I know what I’m not good at. I know what I have a stomach for, and I know what I definitely don’t have a stomach for. And I don’t think I have the stomach to be a real estate developer. I like my own properties and investing in our own things and our own flips, and we do that, and that’s fun, but I have enough on my plate at the moment.
Where are buyers coming from for luxury condos in New York City? Is it mostly from overseas?
No, most of the buyers are domestic. There’s definitely international money, but most of the buyers are renters who, like everyone, just don’t want to pay rent anymore. They’re looking to create roots, and have their first baby or second baby. You have a lot of domestic purchasers coming from different states. And, obviously, right now we have a lot of people coming from California.
What would you say are the current trends in the market for luxury condos right now? Which price points really help move product?
The trend right now is — and it hasn’t really changed a whole lot in the past couple years — is people want to live the way they travel. So, if you like staying in four-, five- and six-star hotels, you want to live that way, so the most full-service, the best brands. There’s a flight to quality.
When I got into the business doing new developments in 2009, 2010 and 2011, the market was so upside down, the only thing you could buy was unbranded buildings, like the third floor of a six-unit building on 63rd Street by the 59th Street Bridge. That’s what you would sell because they were better deals and better value. No one was willing to spend the money to buy quality.
Today, it’s the exact opposite. You wouldn’t even spend on something that wasn’t quality, where you would even overspend on quality because the investment value is protected and you also get a better quality of life. You can see it in the buildings that we’re even selling now, like Williamsburg Wharf with Naftali in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It’s an incredible example. We just sold the penthouse for over $2,700 per square foot in Williamsburg. If you had told me that we were going to do that even two years ago, I probably would have questioned you. Even the Huron, which we’re selling in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, we’re nearly sold out there. We sold a unit on the seventh floor for $2,661 a foot. Again, it’s not about price per square foot anymore. It’s a flight to quality.
Interest rates are still super high, so are people actually buying now with that?
Yeah, people are just adjusting their expectations. It’s not about buyers. When you have rates spike so fast, you’re not removing buyers from the market the way that people talk about — you’re removing sellers. Every mortgage immediately moved from being debt service to becoming a financial asset. And so why would you ever give that up today? Why would you sell unless you need to?
Historically, you probably have about 2 million homes on the market in the United States at any given time. Today, we’re lucky if it’s 1 million. So half is nuts. Last year, fewer homes sold in the United States than in 2023, and 2023 was the worst year we had in 30 years. I think all you need is balance, and you need there to be a new normal. So the longer rates remain where they are, the less people can wait. They’ve got to move. Like, they’ve had that baby, they’ve had that job, they’ve got to make a change. So I think we’ll see greater transaction volume this year, for sure.
And, in terms of developers, who are the new developers entering the market? What are your interactions like with them?
All of our developers, for the most part, are pretty well known, whether it’s Michael Stern’s JDS Development Group and Mercedes-Benz with places in Miami, or Benjamin Shaoul of Magnum. We’re working with Magnum right now, doing the Colette in Greenwich Village — we’ll put that on the market soon. Or David and Gary Feldman of One Park Row that we just put listings online for for the first time.
What would you say are the hardest assignments to get this year as a broker?
Markets come and go. You have high markets and you have low markets. You have unique assets. You do everything you possibly can. Sometimes there’s buyers, sometimes there’s not. Sometimes you have buyers who bring 10 offers and the seller just doesn’t want to take them. I think the hardest listing to get is your first. That’s it. Everything from there, if you play your cards right, is an extension of the first listing you ever got. And you just want to ride that price roller coaster up.
What would you say is the role of tech in the industry today? I know Serhant uses a lot of tech to its advantage, but would you say AI is helpful for dealmaking and content creation, or have you found it to be detrimental?
It’s incredibly helpful. All you’re doing is making people smarter. We have an AI service called S.mple. We invest into our agents and buy their time back. They use the service to do all their administrative work for them. It’s as life changing as the combustible engine was.
I’m curious to get your take on New York office-to-residential conversions. Can you see those properties being a good fit for residential?
It depends. Something that we spend a lot of time with on new construction condos, when we have the site from the ground, is understanding what is the envelope that we’re dealing with. How do we create the best floor plans? How do we create the best experience to live here? And that’s hard to do when you’re doing a conversion project, because the conversion is coming out of a building where the highest and best use is for office or for commercial. And sometimes that means you have a really, really deep floor plate and your core has to go in a tricky place.
But I think there are great opportunities for great conversions. They don’t have to be office. They can be hotel. There’s a lot of hotels that have converted to residential that are great. I’m excited about all the opportunity, though, to create amazing new residential products because we definitely need them.
Isabelle Durso can be reached at idurso@commercialobserver.com.