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.
00:46:23 · Jordi Hays, Ryan Serhant, John Coogan
[00:46:23] S2: have churn. Find find breaking point. [00:46:25] S3: Yeah. Exactly. Of customer dissatisfaction. Yeah. Wherever that inflection point is, that's where we will exist as a business. Yeah. That is real estate brokerage in The United States, and I'm doing my absolute best to try to fix it. [00:46:38] S1: Yeah. What else is, in the organization? Because there's a a large social media team. [00:46:44] S3: Yes. [00:46:44] S1: Like, what makes your organization different than the brokerages, like, from a structural perspective? [00:46:49] S3: I mean, the first thing we started with was we started as a media company that's all real estate in 2020 and 2021. Yeah. That was our our first thing. We were the most followed and subscribed to real estate brand on earth. And we said we're going to use that in for two ways. One, it's we're going to have zero CAC. We have no customer acquisition costs. We've never bought revenue before. We never will. And it's been a kind of an ethos for us as we've grown the business. It's been completely organic, and it's enabled us to grow 100% year over year. And two, we're going to be able to properties in front of more qualified eyeballs than anybody else so we can sell our homes faster and for more money. And so we do that. And so every market we go into, the market demands us coming there versus us sitting there and saying, no. We have to grow. I don't think growth is a is a business plan. I think doing our fiduciary duty to our customers is the business plan.
00:46:49 · Ryan Serhant, John Coogan, Jordi Hays
[00:46:49] S3: I mean, the first thing we started with was we started as a media company that's all real estate in 2020 and 2021. Yeah. That was our our first thing. We were the most followed and subscribed to real estate brand on earth. And we said we're going to use that in for two ways. One, it's we're going to have zero CAC. We have no customer acquisition costs. We've never bought revenue before. We never will. And it's been a kind of an ethos for us as we've grown the business. It's been completely organic, and it's enabled us to grow 100% year over year. And two, we're going to be able to properties in front of more qualified eyeballs than anybody else so we can sell our homes faster and for more money. And so we do that. And so every market we go into, the market demands us coming there versus us sitting there and saying, no. We have to grow. I don't think growth is a is a business plan. I think doing our fiduciary duty to our customers is the business plan. [00:47:35] S1: Yeah. So walk me through. You're wearing another microphone. You're recording So many microphones. Yeah. And so, like, break the fourth wall a little bit. Tell me about, like, how you get the most out of a day in your life from a maximum [00:47:47] S2: Yeah. I was... I I sent John one of the green screen, clips that you do. [00:47:51] S1: So good. I'm like, let me... Yeah. Let me pitch all these, properties in one day. Like...
00:47:51 · John Coogan, Ryan Serhant, Jordi Hays
[00:47:51] S1: So good. I'm like, let me... Yeah. Let me pitch all these, properties in one day. Like... [00:47:55] S3: Yeah. That's just a conference. I used to do, like, did Million Dollar Listing New York on Bravo for ten years. Yeah. We did three spin off shows for Bravo. Yeah. And then we started a a YouTube vlog. So I was going into all these Bravo conversations and meetings. [00:48:08] S2: Million dollar listing is such a funny name in hindsight. Are you just gonna [00:48:10] S3: say like... It wouldn't work today. [00:48:12] S2: Yeah. But all the ever... [00:48:14] S3: All anyone focused on was was YouTube Sure. At the time. And they still do. You go into any Netflix, any any any streamer meeting, their number one focus is on YouTube and the power of social because that's where people are getting their content. Yeah. Right? The content is in the clips. The clips are the content. So Instagram, through Meta last week, announced features, which is coming. So up to ninety minutes of video, and you can string features along. So clip by clip by clip. [00:48:36] S2: Sure. [00:48:36] S3: I think you're gonna see the next Emmy nominated show that is gonna be created in that way. The same way you're probably gonna see Nathan Fielder or an eight twenty four. Yeah. Eight two four, you know, potentially winning the best documentary film with a best picture with a documentary. [00:48:49] S2: Yeah. Yeah.