In 2012, Instagram didn’t have video, the housing market was cautiously celebrating signs of recovery from the crash of 2008, and Ryan Serhant made his debut on Bravo’s reality television show, “Million Dollar Listing New York.”
On the show, one of the early real-estate reality series of its kind, viewers followed Serhant and other agents behind the gilded doors of elite New York City real estate, like a $17 million three-story Greenwich Village townhouse or $18.5 million SoHo loft.
Serhant’s new show, “Owning Manhattan,” which premieres June 28 on Netflix, is the newest addition to the collection.
Serhant explained that during the “Million Dollar Listing” days, there was a “voyeuristic” element for viewers who wanted to pull back the curtain to see the city’s historic brownstones or jaw-dropping penthouses for themselves.
“We were showing people what they had never seen before,” Serhant, 39, told Business Insider. “It was the lifestyles of the rich and the famous.”
Now, though, it’s never been easier to get peeks into rarefied real estate, with the proliferation of reality TV shows that hawk luxury digs, the rise of agents posting photos and videos on social media, and Zillow-stalking as a hobby.
If “The Real World” was “Reality TV 1.0” and shows like “Million Dollar Listing” were “2.0,” Serhant explained, he’s ready to usher in “Reality TV 3.0” with his new Netflix series, which has what he believes is a new angle to lure viewers away from their phones and keep them hooked.
“The real estate isn’t what’s exclusive anymore,” Serhant explained. Instead, the draw is “the lives of the people who work in this business.”
Those lives — his own and the other agents he hired to work at the brokerage he founded in 2020 after leaving established firm Nest Seekers — will be fully on display in the eight-episode season “Owning Manhattan,” premiering June 28 on Netflix.
The show takes viewers on a journey of the ups and downs of building a career in the cutthroat environment of New York City real estate, like Chloe Tucker Caine, who recently transitioned from Broadway to broker, and Tricia Lee, who’s ready to expand her dominance in Brooklyn and take over Manhattan.
“I did not want this to be a glamorized show,” Serhant said. “New York City will make you and also break you.”
Serhant passed down wisdom to new agents
Courtesy of Netflix
With four reality shows and a decade of television under his belt, Serhant is well-positioned to coach the newcomers or the agents reporting to him who round out the cast.
When Netflix scouted the original cast, Serhant gathered them together and told them to take a full weekend to consider the decision. He told them to be ready to reveal vulnerable moments on camera and open up about the full journey with viewers, even the days they’d rather not share. Serhant cautioned them not to join if they just wanted to “get famous and sell toasters.”
“This isn’t years ago, the audience can smell out bullshit like this,” he said.
A few agents actually ended up not doing the show, but 12 brave brokers said yes.
Serhant also had to test his own vulnerability on the show.
“I had never been a CEO on camera before,” he said.
Challenges like losing a top agent to a rival firm or having to fire an employee for breaking company rules, all while managing clients and sales like the more junior agents, were difficult to deal with while being filmed, Serhant said.
But he said it’s important to be frank with the audience.
“The show is going to be great if it’s the most vulnerable real estate show on the planet and the most authentic,” he told BI.
Television tugs at viewers’ heartstrings — which can bring in new clients
Courtesy of Netflix
With over 2 million followers on Instagram, 1.3 million followers on YouTube, and 806,000 followers on TikTok, Serhant already has a platform to share peeks into his daily life and business philosophy.
Still, he said, nothing compares with the power of television.
On any given day, Serhant could be ecstatic in person about selling Mercedes-Benz-branded residences in Miami or showing off new luxury condos in New York City.
However, he observed that clients are routinely more enchanted by the personal glimpses they see on television.
“All anyone else cared about was, ‘Hey, we’d love to work with you. We watched your wedding in Greece.’ Or ‘Hey, we’d love to sell our entire building with you. My wife also went through IVF,'” he told BI.
In the first episode of “Owning Manhattan,” Serhant said he wants his eponymous firm, just four years old, to be the No. 1 brokerage in New York City.
He knows the eyeballs — and clients — his new show will bring in.
“Our business is international,” he told BI. “Netflix is the largest global distribution network on the planet.”
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