00:40:21 · Ryan Serhant, John Coogan, Jordi Hays
[00:40:21] S3: We travel a lot. Yeah. Probably every other week. I'm on the air, either opening a market or visiting a market that we're in. So I'm here this week because we have [00:40:31] S1: Is there a number one destination? Is LA the number one destination that you're going to often, or is it opening markets so you're always in a different place? The next one Okay. [00:40:38] S3: Is the number one. What's been [00:40:39] S1: the most exciting recent market you've booked? [00:40:41] S3: We just opened in Chicago. Okay. Earlier this year, we opened across California. So I opened in Tahoe, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Orange County, and San Diego on one day. So that was a lot. [00:40:51] S1: That's big. [00:40:51] S3: Yeah. And then [00:40:52] S2: Were you in the area after Why We just... We had one places not worth, like, at least one day? They... Well, we we... When we [00:40:59] S3: did the launches, we went one day at a time. [00:41:01] S2: But for us Oh, okay. [00:41:02] S3: Department of state is per state. [00:41:04] S1: Oh, sure. [00:41:04] S3: And so for us to do it, if I started in just one city Mhmm. We have to be on the offense all the time Yeah. Because then we'll be under attack by competitors. So I have to hit them all on one day in a sneak attack. Same thing in Texas. This year in July, opened Texas, and I did Houston, Austin, San Antonio, and Dallas in one day. Yeah. I just did Chicago. Chicago is by far the spiciest, and so we'll go into our launch event for Chicago next week. [00:41:26] S1: Why is it spicy? Spicy.
00:41:26 · John Coogan, Ryan Serhant, Jordi Hays, Joe Weisenthal
[00:41:26] S1: Why is it spicy? Spicy. [00:41:27] S3: It's, it's aggressive. It's mean. There's a lot of, like, in travel business. Yeah. The... In the real estate brokerage business, they don't like newcomers. They don't like changing things. What I found about this industry is people will spend so much money, so much blood, sweat, and tears defending where they've been instead of building for where they're going. And anyone who challenges the status quo and their purse strings, and I'm sure this is the way it is in every business, I sue you. I just sue you. That's what they do. They use... Oh, absolutely. [00:41:57] S2: Just Really? Yeah. And what, is it suing over a specific transaction? [00:42:02] S3: Like, I... They they sue over torturous interference, poaching, recruit, anything that they can come up with. [00:42:07] S2: I've been sued over photos before. And that's specifically so they can say, like, oh, don't work with that guy. We're in a lawsuit with him. He's out of town. 100%. [00:42:16] S0: Do you say there's [00:42:16] S2: a dimensionality? I imagine there's, like, a playbook, like, when you come into a market, the the other brokers have this, like, playbook where they're, this is how to talk about Ryan. Oh, [00:42:26] S3: You're not. [00:42:27] S2: Is why we hate him. This is why we don't like that Yeah. [00:42:30] S3: Sure. They're they're young. They use social. We don't understand it. They're AI native. We don't get what that means. Yeah. Don't go over there.
00:42:30 · Ryan Serhant, Jordi Hays, Joe Weisenthal
[00:42:30] S3: Sure. They're they're young. They use social. We don't understand it. They're AI native. We don't get what that means. Yeah. Don't go over there. [00:42:37] S2: In a lot of these markets, I'm assuming there's, like, an existing brokerage that has been dominant for a long time and is, like, incredibly lazy. Yeah. It depends. [00:42:46] S0: That's right way [00:42:47] S2: to put it because I'm sorry. So... Like, specifically because, at least from my my understanding of real estate is primarily primarily through living in Malibu Yes. Where, like, half of my friends are real estate agents. Yeah. And they're all, like, very friendly to each other, like Yes. When we're at the farmer's market or at a barbecue. But you start to realize, like, they all, like, just absolutely hate each other and, you know... Yeah. They're sharks. They're willing they're willing to, like, work together, like If you force... At times, you know, if they're forced into situations, but it's very funny to to interact with. But then it seems like in every market, you're gonna have one group that sort of becomes dominant and then through that doesn't have to like... They stop having to innovate or or really like put the work in because
00:43:28 · Ryan Serhant, Jordi Hays, John Coogan
[00:43:28] S3: they get some type of like momentum that gets built out. Sure. Yeah. No. Comfort is the death of innovation. And so we operate in a very, very different way, and we go into new markets. And it's not to disrupt. I mean, if anything, we disrupt for good, and we try to do what's best for the consumer. Like, what is best for the home buyer and the home seller? We're in an incredibly tight marketplace right now, and it's not just in luxury markets. It's across the country. Right? You have an affordability problem. You have an inventory problem. We're gonna do less home sales this year in The United States than than we ever thought we were going to do this year. September had less pending contracts than in any single month in thirty years. [00:44:03] S2: Yeah. Worse than, like, o eight and two thousand. [00:44:06] S3: In terms of pending contracts? Yeah. Absolutely. Because rates have spiked. They're up a 100 basis points year over year. You know, the the first time starter price, I think it was in... Before COVID. So end of twenty nineteen, early twenty twenty, there were 80 cities in The United States where a starter home was a million dollars and above, and that was a lot. That's a lot of cities. Today, it's just over two sixty. [00:44:26] S1: Woah. [00:44:27] S3: It's 260 plus cities where a starter home is a million dollars and above. The current mortgage rates, it's... A million dollars is no longer means you made it. A million dollars is now just the entry price. [00:44:37] S1: Yeah. That's rough.
00:44:37 · John Coogan, Jordi Hays, Ryan Serhant
[00:44:37] S1: Yeah. That's rough. [00:44:39] S2: Yeah. How... What is your mindset with the team when market conditions are horrible? Like, I... Just because, like, I think in our world, like, start ups specifically, like, the market the market can be shrinking. But if you're a young company, you can be growing. Yeah. You can be... And and you can be going on attack. [00:44:55] S3: So we've been lucky. [00:44:56] S2: Like, if you you can barely grow your market share, but you can still, like, [00:44:59] S3: actually Yeah. Grow your [00:45:01] S2: And so I think it's an important reminder, like, just because the market is bad, doesn't mean we have to just sort of roll over and accept that like, oh, it's gonna be a bad few years for us. We got to hunker down. You're like, I'm going on the attack.
00:45:12 · Ryan Serhant, John Coogan, Jordi Hays
[00:45:12] S3: Yes. My first day in the real estate business, even just as an agent here in New York City, was the day Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy in 2008. That was a bad day. But for me, because I was brand new, everything was up from there. You start at the bottom. Same thing when we started Serhant. We started the company in September 2020. There was... In New York, there was no vaccine. Everything was shut down. The Wall Street Journal, New York Times said if you're thinking about buying real estate, you're an idiot. Yeah. And then we made a bet on the future, and the future paid us back from there. Same thing now. We trade on the way up, and we trade on the way down. And I think the market being tight enables us to be as efficient as possible in doing, like I said before, like, what is the consumer upside? Where can we actually help people move? Yeah. Yeah. People talk about brokerage all the time, but I don't think anyone's ever woke up and said, man, I wonder what real estate brokerage I'm gonna work with to go and find my next home or sell my home. They wake up and they say, no. I wanna move. Yeah. Who's gonna make it as frictionless as possible? Who's gonna save me as much money as possible? And the traditional brokerage model, is kind of like blockbuster. Mhmm. If you've kind of read those stories where they wake up every day and they say, how do we manage customer satisfaction to the point at which we can minimize churn? [00:46:23] S1: Yeah. [00:46:23] S3: Yeah. So you [00:46:23] S2: have churn. Find find breaking point.