With Bravo Property listings for millions of dollars in New YorkRyan Serhant became a star in the real estate sector. But with a jump to Netflix and Owning ManhattanThe New York City stockbroker and reality TV veteran aims to build an empire. You can’t close every deal personally when you’re the boss, so Own Manhattan He’s surrounded Serhant with a coterie of closers—top producers, determined climbers, impression-makers, and designated disruptors—all working out of SERHANT’s SoHo headquarters and keeping each other out of the big boss’s line of sight. Will Ryan Serhant achieve his goal of taking his eponymous brokerage to the top spot in the city? With all the conflicting personalities in the office, do you even care? Either way, the real estate wing of Netflix’s streaming properties has a flashy new tenant.
OWNING MANHATTAN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening shot: We get some standard beauty shots of Manhattan before entering Ryan Serhant’s shiny multi-story townhouse in Brooklyn. This is the same place where Serhant and his wife Emilia Bechrakis rehabilitated themselves on Bravo. Ryan’s renewalyour 2021 MDLNY cleave.
The essence: It’s the character you know from that other channel, now on Netflix and surrounded by a fleet of personality archetypes. As Serhant drives to his offices in a chauffeur-driven Range Rover, he takes a moment to wax philosophical, referring to cemeteries as places full of wasted potential. Basically, if you’re not selling, you’re dying. “I am one of the best real estate brokers in the world, if not the best, and I make over a billion dollars in sales every year.” SERHANT, which he founded after twelve years in the business and ten in the reality TV trenches, is the sixth-largest brokerage in New York City, with 350 agents, and in a bustling sales gathering, those with big sales recent ones can autograph a wall next to their monetary figure. Validate what they got against everyone who didn’t.
This is the atmosphere at SERHANT. Bring your game “AAAAAAAA,” says the boss. And his team will need it if they are to find a buyer for a gigantic trophy penthouse in Central Park Tower, which Serhant has three months to sell. 17,545 square feet, 11 bathrooms, a ballroom overlooking the park, and a curved glass staircase, all for $250 million. While Serhant initially assigns that job to seasoned agent Kayla, back at headquarters we also meet arrogant veteran salesman Nile, successful Brooklyn real estate expert Tricia Lee (her fiancé Jeff is also an agent at SERHANT), and a few other agents, including Jess T, Jess M, and Jordan H. “The Office is 100% like a Lifetime movie,” Jordan says in a cutaway. “Doesn’t it take a little crazy to get into real estate in New York?”
Agents featured in Own Manhattan They’re a mix of seasoned veterans, up-and-comers and even people like Savannah, a young North Carolina transplant Serhant says he hired as part of his brokerage’s apprenticeship program. This multi-level combination is deliberate and becomes immediately relevant once it confronts her personalities and sales objectives. When Kayla’s wealthy buyer begs for the penthouse, Serhant puts a handful of his best people on the property. “Work on your networks,” he encourages them, but what really lights them up is the possibility of receiving an inpidual commission of ten million dollars. For Ryan Serhant and his team, it’s all about the drive to survive and thrive, and look good doing it. “Let the games begin”.
What shows will it remind you of? Serhant left Million dollar property listings in New York in 2021, and the series has since been cancelled, though it lasted longer than other one-off spin-offs from the still-existing mothership, Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles. And the sharks-in-the-water vibe of the competing agents in SERHANT is definitely trying to capture the energy of Sunset Sale, Selling the OCand Buy Londonwhich are part of Netflix’s burgeoning real estate reality portfolio.
Our opinion: The format of Own Manhattan It is so familiar that it completely fades into the background. Follow its generic musical cues that include sounds similar to current pop and hip-hop hits to heroic shots of expensive New York real estate. Consider brief encounters with sellers and buyers, like a woman putting her Hudson Square condo up for sale because she’s moving back to Montecito, or NBA player Taj Gibson looking at a rehabbed Victorian house in Brooklyn. And take a second to consider how you would arrange nearly 18,000 square feet of glass-paneled views of Central Park. None of this is different from Own ManhattanThe aspirational element is identical to every other luxury real estate show in the unscripted universe, but the best of those shows also feature interesting personalities, and Netflix has a good one in Ryan Serhant.
He has a Ryan Reynolds-esque charm and he knows it. He’s been working in real estate in the reality space for a decade and is as familiar with playing the audience as he is with the stories on offer. In short, Serhant is suave. But he also manages to convey a genuine seriousness about his calling. At the pricey Central Park Tower property, he notes that people still need a place to make cereal in the morning, no matter how rich they are. And there’s no doubt that SERHANT is as much his professional pride and joy as a personal challenge, making the prompts he prepares for his agents part of a reality framework and the price of doing business.
Less fluid than Serhant is how Owning Manhattan manages that group of agents. Some of the one-on-ones between them feel really forced, or even repetitive. Many of them say the same vague business book verbiage, like “competition fuels greatness.” And more than one of these people explain their horizon-sized goals as a foregone conclusion. Surely some of them will rise to the occasion, but at least initially, they are cut from very similar cloth. Then a young man with tattoos on his neck and a disdainful look at the veteran agents appears to blow everything up. “People are afraid of change,” Jonathan says in his court. —A particularly successful change. My brand is celebrities, Instagram models; “They are the crypto guys.” It’s an exhausting appointment. But it’s probably good for the environment. Own Manhattan is building.
Sex and skin: It’s a uniform. Tailored suits in bold colors, accented with piles of expensive-looking jewelry, or with select panels, pleats, or loose lapels to reveal cleavage, muscles, a shower of tattoos, or all three. This is the look articulated in Owning Manhattan“90% of real estate agents in New York make less than $40,000,” says a young agent. But, just so you know, working at SERHANT is not like that. “$40,000 is… I mean, my… my watch is worth five times as much.”
Parting shot: The first installment of Owning Manhattan She’s pretty carefree, but in scenes from the upcoming season, things get mean and foul-mouthed. Even the seemingly calm and collected Ryan Serhant loses his cool. “Either you push yourself harder in this company or you start your own damn company.”
Sleeping star: “She’s giving me the zang, and I’m trying to give her the zang back.” With her Broadway experience and her ubiquitous poodle, Chloe’s personality appears to be as bold as Ryan Serhant believes. And since he’s already aligning her younger agent’s goals with the market intelligence and billionaire connections of the arrogant Nile, Chloe will be one to watch as she aims for the top of SERHANT’s hierarchy. .
Pilot’s most typical phrase: Serhant has goals. “Right now, we’re the number six brokerage in New York City. But I don’t want to be… sixth “I’m betting my whole life, my house, and every dollar I have, because I’m self-financing here, on the success of this business. So, you know… it has to work.”
Our call: STREAM IT, especially if you already like Netflix’s suite of unscripted real estate shows. It’s more in the same vein, or in the vein of competing series on Bravo, with plenty of big-money looks and luxury properties in the mix, and Ryan Serhant’s established reality show character at the center of it all.
Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is a freelance writer and editor living in Chicago. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.
