Ryan Serhant on Driving Sales of Luxury Properties Through Awe-Inspiring Content and Tech-Driven Amplification
By Bernadette Starzee
Last year, Founder, CEO and Broker Ryan Serhant expanded SERHANT. to the Hamptons, bringing a brokerage that is designed for the future to the East End. Envisioned to upend the traditional, and often outdated models that have dominated the industry for decades, the firm has amassed an international footprint and global presence through its industry expertise, social media presence and digital education program.
SERHANT. proves that if a property is beautifully presented and put in front of an exponential number of targeted eyes, buyers will come – including many who didn’t know they wanted the home in the first place.
That’s the concept behind the brokerage’s practice of driving sales of luxury properties through awe-inspiring content and innovative amplification techniques. Founded by Serhant in New York City in 2020, the rapidly growing brokerage opened a Water Mill location called SERHANT. House Hamptons in 2022 and expanded to six states earlier this year.
Unlike the typical real estate agency, SERHANT. has both an in-house creative agency, called SERHANT. ID Lab, and an in-house production studio, known as SERHANT. Studios, with teams of digital specialists who write, produce, shoot and edit engaging stories to share across a range of digital channels with contacts around the world. These teams support SERHANT.’s 350 agents in maximizing the use of virtual channels. Content includes film-quality productions of property tours – typically about eight to 12 minutes – which run on YouTube, are synched to other sites, and are often dubbed in other languages. Various versions of the content are put out over channels like Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, in both vertical and horizontal formats.
To get the stunning content in front of as many of the right eyes as possible, SERHANT. uses its proprietary Amplification Data Exchange (ADX), a technology-powered innovation platform that harnesses data from sources never before utilized in the real estate sector. This reach visualization tool gives the company insights into more than 6 million SERHANT. followers and the nearly 200 million users who are reached organically worldwide. These insights inform messaging and marketing strategies to ensure listings and content are reaching the largest targeted audiences.
Messages are also shared through the 15,000 agents in 110 countries that subscribe to the “Sell It Like SERHANT.” education program.
“When you are selling real estate, you are selling something visual, and the more people I can put visual stories in front of right in their phones, the more I can help our clients reach the greatest target audience,” says Serhant.
“When most people sell homes today, they put nice photos on the internet, and if buyers are looking, they will see it and show up. But that market is very small compared to the people we reach. My goal when developing SERHANT. was to sell real estate not only to the people who are actively looking but also to people who don’t know they want the property until you show it to them. We take a property and amplify it to a massive audience of people who maybe didn’t know they wanted a home in, say, Bridgehampton, until they saw the stunning house, the beautiful pool, the incredible views. Everything is sellable if people know it’s for sale.”
Properties valued at more than $10 million qualify as a SERHANT. Signature listing and thus gain access to a range of premium, white-glove services and a team of experts that specialize in the high-end luxury market. These services include promoting the property to SERHANT.’s Billionaire Index, a personal Rolodex that Serhant and his team have spent 15 years curating.
Equally important to the success of SERHANT., which recorded more than $2.2 billion in sales in 2022, is its team of experienced and knowledgeable real estate agents who help both sellers and buyers exceed their objectives.
“We have a consummate class of professionals with deep expertise, connections and knowledge of the local market and excellent negotiation skills and who are embracing new media and technologies to help our clients achieve their goals,” Serhant says.
Since beginning his real estate career in 2008, Serhant has sold more than $5 billion in properties. Prior to founding SERHANT., he led one of New York City’s top-rated real estate teams, which was ranked the No. 1 team by The Wall Street Journal for three consecutive years and who were nicknamed “The Closers” because of their uncanny ability to sell the unsellable and to achieve price- per-square-foot records across the city.
Throughout his career, Serhant has also had a strong focus on the Hamptons market.
Like the company’s other locations, SERHANT. House Hamptons was designed to be a real estate office of the future, with an emphasis on collaboration and networking spaces. Located on Montauk Highway, the three-building structure features 3,000 square feet of space. Rather than a typical office layout with standard desks, it was designed as a gathering space.
“The goal is to bring everyone together, to create more deal flow and conversations to keep our pulse on the market and collaborate with and inspire one another,” Serhant says. There are co-working spaces, client-facing areas, conference areas and networking spaces, which include a full retrofitted modern barn.
Benefitting from the lockdown orders of the pandemic and the subsequent meteoric growth in telecommuting, the Hamptons market posted record-breaking years in 2020 and 2021.
“The market is still strong, but as it changes and updates, it’s a different world,” Serhant says. “Real estate agents must be more aggressive and think outside the box, and our company is built to do that.”
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This article appeared as the cover story for our July Fourth 2023 issue. Read the full digital version of the magazine, click here. For more articles from our various magazines, click here.
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