Brokerages know that the recruitment of real estate agents and teams is always competitive, and some have found it even more so in the wake of the National Association of Realtors’ settlement that’s prompted agents to reevaluate their businesses.
But SERHANT. has shot its brand to the top of every agent’s wishlist in a way — and at a scale — that other brokerages aren’t able to replicate. And that’s by making a hit Netflix show.
Since the brokerage’s “Owning Manhattan” debuted, the show has rested comfortably among Netflix’s top-10 most streamed shows in the U.S. With the added visibility, the company has been flooded with listings inquiries — and with agents looking for a job.
Todd Sheridan, SERHANT.’s vice president of strategic growth, said that inbound leads for agents wanting to join the brokerage have increased 400% since the show launched. If the company can leverage its meteoric rise in brand awareness into a high-quality scaling of its business, the errant periods in all of SERHANT.’s branding might be better replaced with exclamation points.
“I’m now both the hunter and the hunted,” Sheridan said. “The cool thing about this show, it highlighted the different services we have, which I think is incredibly powerful from a recruiting standpoint. So, all it did was show people what we offer at a higher level and in a much more efficient way than I could ever do.”
The company’s digital traffic has exploded since “Owning Manhattan” dropped on June 28. As of Monday, its social media reach has increased 88%, listing inquiries have jumped 285%, and traffic to the website has risen by a shocking 1,915% since the show debuted, according to internal data.
Today’s competitive landscape hinges on what a brokerage is looking for — and where. In some areas, team recruiting has heated up for brokerages looking to scale quickly, while other firms are adding top performers on an individual basis.
Dan Smith, principal of the Orange County, California-based mega team Anvil Real Estate, said that competition for teams has cooled off in his area, but competition for individuals is extremely heavy.
“There’s not a day that goes by that one of my agents doesn’t bring to me a recruiting piece that they have received from someone else,” he said of Anvil, which ranks No. 57 nationally on RealTrends‘ mega team list by volume. “My agents are actively being recruited.”
Even before the show, SERHANT. was doing well in agent recruiting thanks to founder Ryan Serhant’s flamboyant personality and decade-long stint on “Million Dollar Listing New York.” According to the company, it has doubled its number of agents each year since its launch in September 2020.
Sheridan said that the brokerage added 200 agents in the first half of this year, bringing its total headcount to about 650. And more additions are in the works. The company’s footprint is often thought of as the general radius of New York City, but it has expanded up and down the East Coast from Connecticut to Florida and Georgia.
Florida has been a particular point of emphasis for SERHANT. Mark Raumaker, founder of the Orlando-based team The Home Squad, reached out to SERHANT. this year about joining. He was enticed by the brokerage’s high-profile brand and technology platform S.MPLE.
“Once Ryan [Serhant] and I met, it was clear we should be in business together,” Raumaker said. “Our ideas, styles and overall visions were very aligned. From there, it was more of a ‘dating’ process to see if we were the right fit for each other. My wife and I met with the executive team over a two-month span to learn about them, and they learned about us. It was a very intentional process from both sides.”
Where SERHANT. goes from here is yet to be seen, but “Owning Manhattan“ has emphatically presented it with the opportunity to become one of the biggest and most well-known brands in the real estate brokerage world.
“I was on a text chain with Ryan today and an agent just got a $15 million buyer based on the show,” Sheridan said. “So, there’s a lot of things happening. I have a bunch of meetings this week with some very high producers as well.”
