Ryan Serhant of 'Owning Manhattan' talks AI, luxury real estate, and the importance of door knobs

Serhant appeared on the Bravo (CMCSA) television series “Million Dollar Listing” from 2012 to 2021 and now stars on the Netflix $NFLX (NFLX) series “Owning Manhattan.” He recently made the biggest transaction of his real estate career — closing on a $200 million property, while on a flight to Miami.

Check out Serhant’s conversation with Quartz below. The transcript of this conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Quartz: One of the interesting things about the high end real estate market is that there’s technically no hard definition of luxury real estate. When you’re looking at a property, what elements make it truly luxurious?

Serhant: I think most people define luxury by the cost: if you’re spending $10 million, most people would say, ‘well, ten million – that’s luxury.’

For me to consider a property luxury real estate, I look at the quality and the attention to detail. There’s $10 million boxes that are probably just expensive because of the location or size. But they’re not luxurious. A $1 million incredible home, that had artisans using Venetian plaster, might not be in the most luxurious location, but it’s a luxury home.

The first thing I look at in a home – and I’m weird – is the hardware, in rooms like the kitchen and bathroom. Because it’s one of the last things you buy, when you’re building or designing your home. It really reveals if someone is spending the right amount of money and not forgetting the details.

When people pay less attention to details, it makes me wonder, ‘okay, what else did you cheat on?’

If you want to know if a place was built the right way, if it’s a real luxury property, look at the door knobs. I go into houses all the time that have s—-y, little door knobs and I just know: this is going to be a problem. It always is, every time.

Quartz: What is the biggest piece of advice you’d give to someone who watches a show like “Owning Manhattan” or “Million Dollar Listing” and wants to get into the luxury real estate market?

Serhant: First: get your license. Then you need to work on a team and be an apprentice for two or three years. You’re not going to start making money tomorrow. You have to really, really learn. That has to be part of the plan. And if you can stomach that, I think it’s the greatest career you could ever have.

Quartz: You’re venturing into the world of AI with S.MPLE by SERHANT. Can you explain what S.MPLE does and how you foresee AI impacting the luxury real estate industry?

Serhant: S.MPLE is a workflow automation service that uses what we call artificial intelligent recipes to create agentic support. Long gone are the days where now you need seven different systems to do your administrative work.

Using S.MPLE, you get back the 80% of your day that you use for administrative tasks. Now you can actually spend your time getting out there, selling, and creating deals and relationships.

For the consumer, it makes your relationship with your salesperson so much more valuable, because you don’t wait for anything anymore. All the administrative work is now automated. It’s creating much stronger relationships, especially when consumers are working with an agent to buy something.

I think until a house sells itself to another house, there’s still a great need for salespeople. And when you’re spending a lot of money, you want to talk to a human. But S.MPLE removes a lot of the additional complexities. Your work is done for you. Our team calls it Instacart (CART) for sales.