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Within 15 minutes, “Owning Manhattan” star Ryan Serhant has received 21 job applications from people wanting to join his luxury real estate company, Serhant. “The Netflix effect is real,” he says eating a late lunch over Zoom.
In its first week on Netflix, the show was viewed more than 512 million minutes. The effect? He has seen an uptick in applications as realtors express an interest in wanting to join the company. “Go to serhantready.com and fill in the form properly,” Serhant says as he mentions an ever-expanding folder on his desktop of potential candidates.
Set in New York City, the eight-part series follows the inner workings of the company founded by Serhant. The series is the brainchild of World of Wonder co-founders Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato.
The show anchors itself more in the real-time listing, sales and even losses. But it is not without drama as his team of agents compete to sell the city’s most prestigious listings, including a Central Park Tower penthouse listed at $250 million, and other properties. They’re also vying for a space on the sales wall as a mark of success. Serhant and the team didn’t sell the penthouse in Season 1, nor did they sell the Jardim penthouse in Chelsea. It did, however, sell shortly after the show debuted for $15 million.
All that makes for perfect Season 2 fodder — it has yet to be renewed. Serhant agrees there’s room for more. Season 1 “was eight episodes of building out the world to let you know what’s coming because there’s bigger and better waiting in the wings.”
Barbato concurs. He’s excited for the cast, saying, “I can’t wait for people to get to know this team even more. We’re going to need more than eight episodes.”
Serhant, Bailey and Barbato have ideas beyond “Owning Manhattan” and ideas for expanding the franchise. If anyone is an expert at expanding their franchises, it’s Bailey and Barbato. They’re the masterminds behind the “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and “Million Dollar Listing” franchises.
The three sat down to talk with Variety over Zoom to discuss why Serhant was perfect for their next project, a potential franchise and more.
As pioneers of real estate reality TV (“Hot Property” “Housebusters” and “Island Hunters”), what does it feel like to be here in 2024, with “Owning Manhattan” and seeing audiences still thirsty for real estate reality?
FENTON BAILEY: It’s exciting to be here with Ryan. It is an extraordinary honor, and I’m savoring every second. It’s been 18 years since “Million Dollar Listing” started. At first, it was “Million Dollar Listing: Los Angeles” and then a few years later, “Million Dollar Listing: New York” with Ryan, and it feels like we’ve raised kids together.
How did the three of you know that this would make for great television?
BAILEY: I’ve always believed that someone’s interior is a map of who they are or what they would like to be. And whether the market is booming or in recession, people are always fascinated to look inside other people’s homes and go behind the net curtains, especially if you’ve got a dynamic character like Ryan taking you there.
RANDY BARBATO: “Owning Manhattan” is a dream of what you would imagine your favorite television show to be. The sets of luxury real estate, an incredible cast, set in New York City with the high stakes of million dollar deals, it’s a dream TV scenario. And then you put Ryan in the middle of it. The stakes are real, Ryan is building the biggest brokerage firm on the planet. It all makes perfect sense, and here we are waiting to start shooting season two and three and four and five.
RYAN SERHANT: I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Randy and Fenton and Bravo. They plucked me out of obscurity in 2010. So it’s been over 14 years. I went to that open casting call for the New York spin-off of “Million Dollar Listing” in Times Square in March 2010. I sat on that chair and I had 30 seconds. They said, “Why should you be here? How do you get around New York City? How much business do you do? What’s your favorite animal?”
[With this], we thought there’s a real narrative here that people would love about the start of this company, but we’re only going to do it if it elevates the genre and if it’s something people haven’t seen before. For me personally, I only want to make a TV show where people are putting down their phones, and they’re looking up at the screen.
To have the show come out and receive so many DMS and emails from people saying, “I sat down to watch one episode and I didn’t pick up my phone for seven hours.” That’s the win because how do you keep the audience on their toes? How do you surprise them? How do you create real estate reality 3.0?
The audience goes through the sales and losses and that is so fascinating to follow. One example is the Central Park Tower penthouse, when you get that call at the top of the Empire State Building with the sale not moving forward, can you talk about that moment?
SERHANT: If you watch it, I didn’t know what else to do and I turned to the closest thing to me, which was the wall – and I closed my eyes and hugged it. In Sales 101 you’re taught that you’re only as good as the last deal. But at the same time, you’re never going to succeed if you can’t get up after being knocked down. After that little hug, I go outside and we’re making content to celebrate the company. It’s the last thing you want to do because you just got the worst phone call of the year. But you put that smile on. I think a lot of people probably related to that moment.
BARBATO: What makes the show so special, and what we all tried to achieve is both intimacy and vulnerability often driven by transactional drama and having Ryan and the cast in that way? But also marrying these cinematic challenges. How do you put those two together in a Docu-reality way without losing the see authenticity and intimacy of vulnerability?
How did you find your cast of realtors to be in the series?
BAILEY: Ryan is the perfect ringmaster. The moment I realized that he had taken the Tommy Hilfiger flagship in SoHo, it signaled such a profound seismic shift. Taking that building and creating what essentially is like a clubhouse or a community hadn’t been done before.
SERHANT: The way I look at it, is this is my band of brothers and sisters from all different places in the world. Tricia Lee and Jess Markowski’s backstories are a lot. Nile and what he has gone through -we didn’t have time in season one to really dig through.
We did the work, went through all the agent profiles, and were in conversations with a couple of others. I was already talking to Jonathan, Jess and Savannah about coming over and joining a team and it aligned. But we put 250 agents on casting tapes and went through them and mixed and matched and we did a presentation. We took it out and got some feedback and went from there.
Jonathan is very intriguing and in the end, you fire him. Since then, he’s said he purposely got fired, can you comment on that?
SERHANT: I don’t know anything about that. I think everyone has the right to try to control their own narrative. We’re very busy at Serhant building and growing, that I don’t have the time to get involved in past employee drama, let alone current employee drama. I think that Jonathan’s career played out on TV in real time exactly the way you see it. If it’s better for him to tell people that being fired was his idea then all the power to him.
If there were an expansion of the franchise, aside from a season two, is there another city that you would like to see expanded on?
SERHANT: “Owning Manhattan” has the opportunity to also play in other markets. Manhattan and Miami are one and the same. I grew up on a farm and then when I graduated high school, my parents moved to a ranch. They sold that ranch in 2020. We are involved, but not very publicly. If you think that the characters and the drama in Manhattan is a lot, put that in Montana and Wyoming. Imagine an opening shot of a helicopter going over farmland as you’re getting ready to put 17,000 acres on the market for sale for the first time in seven generations. That to me is wow.
I was watching this and thinking, “I wonder if I could do this, and sell real estate,” if someone wanted to join Serhant, what would you say to them?
Our website traffic is up over 2,000% and all of our systems broke. I have a submission folder on my desktop. Since we started this interview, I’ve had 21 applications (one per minute).
So, go to serhantready.com and fill out the forms appropriately. The Netflix effect is real.
BAILEY: I have an idea, “Owning Mars.” Someone from the team needs to get on that rocket and plant the flag.
What have you learned about Ryan in all the years of working with him?
BAILEY: Ryan’s always been the same. That energy, drive and wink have always been there. So, it’s exciting to see Ryan reaching a global audience all at once. It’s different, exciting and very gratifying because he’s a unique and very special talent. We’ve somehow been drawn to people whose medium is to speak TV fluently – Tammy Faye and RuPaul – and that’s his medium. He understands TV.
BARBATO: You get bits and pieces of it this season, but he’s a kind soul. It’s the surprising part of him. He’s a crazy businessman and he’s building empires, but he’s such a sweet soul.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
