'Owning Manhattan': Ryan Serhant talks about his move from Bravo to Netflix

Ryan Serhant can't sell real estate without a TV show.

After a brief acting career, and just months into his foray into real estate, he was cast in the Bravo reality series “Million Dollar Listing New York,” a spin-off of its Los Angeles-based predecessor. The series offered viewers tours of multimillion-dollar luxury properties while showcasing the drama between arrogant and shrewd agents who often competed for listings or sales. It premiered in 2012 and ran for nine seasons, helping to establish a winning format of high-stakes real estate voyeurism combined with reality drama.

From the beginning, Serhant sought to stand out with an over-the-top, over-the-top salesman style: dressing as Aslan, the lion from “The Chronicles of Narnia,” and jumping into a pool during an open house were among his exploits. Always a dealmaker, he negotiated a series of specials and spin-offs for Bravo, most recently “Ryan's Renovation” (2021), which chronicles the remodeling of the Brooklyn townhouse he shares with his wife and daughter.

In 2020, he founded his own real estate agency: Serhant. – and once again invited the cameras, but this time for Netflix, which has doubled down on its real estate reality lineup with shows like “Selling Sunset” and “Buying Beverly Hills.” With “Owning Manhattan,” now streaming, cameras follow Serhant and his team of agents as they compete, sometimes against each other, for some of New York's most sought-after properties.

On a recent video call from New York, as a backseat passenger preparing for his next appointment, Serhant talked about how he went from Bravo to Netflix, how he handles reality TV as a boss, and why cash-strapped viewers can’t get enough of luxury real estate porn. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

You have a long history with Bravo. You approached them with the idea for a show when you first started your company. What response did you receive and what motivated the jump to Netflix?

When I knew I was starting my own company, I had a conversation with Bravo and my agents, and they basically said, “You know ‘Million Dollar Listing’ is a format? It follows a couple of real estate agents as they sell real estate. Imagine ‘Law & Order’ — that’s a format. Imagine, if you put on an episode of ‘Law & Order’ and all of a sudden one of the detectives was like, ‘JK, I have my own detective agency now and that’s the show. ’” That would be weird for the format. And so we ended the show after they tracked down my Serhant startup, and I immediately put together a presentation of what my next chapter would look like… and I pitched it to all the networks. I got offers for most of them. But I know Jenn [Levy] Very good on Netflix. [Levy, who had been director of unscripted originals at Bravo, left her post at Netflix earlier this year.]

We're moving forward with Netflix and honestly, it's been a great experience. Scratch the itch of, “Okay, you want to see $250 million penthouses in New York City?” Here you go, Episode 1. Want to see what the drama is like inside the workplace of a young real estate startup, 'Vanderpump Rules' style? OK here you go. You want to have your own orchestra composing your music that gives you a slight 'Succession' feel. Yes, we could do that too. Plus, we'll launch drones through the canyons of this city and show Manhattan like it's never been shown before. Yes, we can do that because we are Netflix. What more do you want to do? I thought, “I've never seen a reality show that has a first-person voice-over narrator, can I do that?” And they said, “Yes.”

You have a background in acting and have been in the reality space for a while, so you know that drama makes for good television. But you take your role as a professional starting a business seriously. hWhat's it like navigating the drama now as a boss?

Very stressful. It was difficult. “Million Dollar Listing” was stressful at the time, but it was really all me. It was on my shoulders, my clients, my business. This time, I'm betting my life on starting this business in 2020, so exposure is a double-edged sword. With Netflix, part of the deal was, “This is the amount of time you're going to film and we'll film everything, for better or worse, and see what happens.” That takes some of the pressure out of the deal. In “Million Dollar Listing,” it was formatted. Then you'll list it and you'll have those 12 listings on a board for a year, and if they sell, they sell; They don't sell, they fire you on television. Because of the shooting window, things couldn't be left open. This is different. This season ends on a cliffhanger. Every episode is a cliffhanger. We had an agent, mid-season, who just up and quit on camera. I've had to fire people who are pressuring other people to resign. That's what you can see in addition to the offers now. The show starts with me and 12 agents, and ends with 10. I start with gray hair and end with white hair.

To expand on that, Jonathan Normolle He quickly emerged as the so-called villain of the season. From the show's perspective, the drama and tension that someone like him brings is appealing. But you, as the boss, decided to fire him. Tell me about the push and pull of keeping the show entertaining and your company in mind.

There is reality, and it is what we do all day (work, people, management, payroll, business, opening new markets every day) and then there is perception, which is above reality. reality. What I did with “Million Dollar Listing” was say, “Okay, I have the reality of my business. The perception will be that of a 'million dollar quote', and it will not be above reality, but above it. And that will drive me to constantly bring reality closer to perception.” Because we would take a year to film “Million Dollar Listing” and it would be released the following year. Whoever I act, however I speak, whatever properties I display, that's what the world will see next year. That's where a lot of the intent of the stress lay. Obviously, I want to do the TV show because I've only done TV shows. I don't know how to sell real estate without a TV show. I said [to my executive team]“If we’re going to do this as a company, we have to go all in.” I don’t want anyone to watch the show and say, “What didn’t they show?” That was the push and pull: Do you really want to show the warts and bolts of your business to 270 million people? Or do I see it not as warts, but as a young person who’s building their own business and is vulnerable to the world, and you’re going to go on this journey with me?

“Owning Manhattan” stars Savannah Gowarty, Jessica Markowski and Jonathan Frank Normolle, who was fired.

(Netflix)

Have you had any races?–Have you been with Jonathan since then?

I give Jonathan a lot of credit. I saw something in him that I also saw in myself. I’m not tattooed on my head, but like a fish out of water. I had a dream in my head: “Dude, this is what you have to do: People are going to look at you and judge a book by its cover. You have seconds to change people’s minds. You sell something big, you show them that you’re a great, great person who’s also funny and amazing and cool, and the face of the next generation, you’re going to have the biggest career ever. Or you could blow it all up.” And that was probably my biggest disappointment. But I give him credit for being himself.

There are some headline-grabbing deals on “Owning Manhattan.” Tell me about these listings and the struggle to get high-profile clients to appear on camera or not. Bad Bunny ends rent Jardim's property was featured on the show for a record-breaking $150,000 a month. The season ends with you getting a listing for a condo that was used on “Succession” as Roman Roy's House.

How random was that ending? Kudos to our production team for taking the weirdest idea I think I’ve ever had. I’m like, “You know what we’re going to do? We’re going to end the show in a way where people are going to be like, ‘What the hell just happened?’ ” All I’m thinking is: How do I get someone to look up from their damn phone? Anyway, I guess I’ve gotten used to that for a long time now. But that’s why you see buyer representatives or family members or lawyers chiming in on clients here and there. On our show, we see a lot of real people, a lot of real developers. The penthouse in Central Park Tower, that’s a long-standing listing. There’s only a certain amount of people in the world who can afford it, and so, [we say]”We're going to put it on a Netflix show. The first person to buy it will get it. Just trust me.”

Harlan [Berger]the seller of the Jardim, where we rented it to Bad Bunny, we sold it, by the way. We just sold it after we finished filming for, I think, $15 million. That's a classic example. The seller agreed [to be on camera]but the tenant [Bad Bunny] He did not agree to appear on camera. We don't mention anyone's names. It was published in the press, so it is now part of the public domain; but the press, as it is a huge rental sum, helped to attract the buyer. You don't buy a Hermès bag because it could be your bag. The brand sends a message. The same thing happens with the real estate sector.

The interior of a Manhattan house from season 1 of “Owning Manhattan.”

(Netflix)

It's a challenging time to showcase some of New York's most exclusive real estate on a global stage. The cost of living, especially in big cities, is crazy. what's wrong with it you Have you noticed why viewers like to get this look inside the upper echelons?

Because we are all voyeurs. We all want what we can't have. We all fantasize. It's what keeps us going. It's like the liquidity of the brain, it's the liquidity of dreams. I watch “Drive to Survive.” I'll never be behind the wheel of one of those cars, but it's fun to watch their lives unfold on the race track and think, “Man, they're taking this seriously.”

How do you feel about the real estate market right now? How many of the sales you currently make are with buyers abroad?

The most interesting statistic for me is that before COVID, I was doing 35% of all our transactions in cash. Today it's like 75%. The market right now is educated: it's not exuberant or devastated, it's educated. International buyers, we're doing a lot with. I just sold a house; we sold it to a Croatian guy over FaceTime. Before that, I sold a house for $57 million over FaceTime to someone in South Africa.

[International sales are] A big part of our business and a big part of me too is the fact that we sign up for Netflix. I called five of my clients who are overseas and said, “Okay: Netflix, Amazon, Peacock, Hulu. Which one do you have?” And the common denominator of all of them was Netflix. I thought, “Okay, for business, this is a mutually beneficial relationship, so we'll choose the larger network.”