The Iced Coffee Hour - Ryan Serhant’s Shocking Prediction For Housing Prices, Mamdani Victory, & ‘Freeze The Rent!’

Episode Date: November 9, 2025

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This episode is brought to you by Tellus Online Security. Oh, tax season is the worst. You mean hack season? Sorry, what? Yeah, cybercriminals love tax forms. But I've got Tellus Online Security. It helps protect against identity theft and financial fraud so I can stress less during tax season or any season.

Plan started just $12 a month. Learn more at tellus.com slash online security. No one can prevent all cybercrime or identity theft. Conditions apply. We are in one of the most delusional real estate markets I've ever seen, and I love it. So ran Mondani's win has sparked a wealth panic. There's Mondani's rent freeze. Mondani's policies are going to be very destructive for this city.

First, everyone needs to stay calm and carry on. Fear fuels markets. New York City has gotten through global recessions, global pandemics, way worse than a 33-year-old TikTok mayor. Rent is high. Regular necessities are all too high. So I get it. Like, if you're angry and someone comes out and says, I know why you're angry and I'm going to fix it, you vote for that guy.

So what do you think are the biggest opportunities going forward today? I have a lot of clients through real estate who just have become extremely wealthy in so many different ways. And they all keep saying that something really big is coming. It's AI, but not really in the way you'd expect. So if you do those four things, you'll be wildly successful. How would you change the housing market if you were mayor? Ryan, thank you so much for coming on the iced coffee hour. Really appreciate it.

Our last episode did incredible, and I'm really excited to talk to you again today, because a lot of people now argue that we're in a housing bubble. Really? That housing is very unaffordable for a lot of people, especially New York City of all places. Correct. What do you have to say about that? I look at a bubble as something that can be explained, but is about to pop. I don't think what we're in is about to pop. I think it can easily be explained.

I think we have an unaffordability crisis. I think there's an income gap, obviously, but I think rates are incredibly high. I think there's very, very, very little inventory. We're on year three of like three decade lows in terms of housing transactions throughout the United States. And that's worldwide, but just so we can focus the conversation here, that doesn't feel like a bubble to me.

What it feels like is an unaffordable crisis more than anything. And it's pushing people into rents, but rents are also incredibly, incredibly high. and so something has to give. And so what will probably happen is you'll have an American debt crisis with all of the debt that people have racked up from buy now, pay later tacos to student debt, to auto loan debt, to just general credit card debt. I feel like there's a new credit card that gets invented every other day that sells you a bag of rewards, but actually is praying on people's lack of income to be able to afford what it means to actually live in the United States these days. that seems like a bubble to me versus housing. Anyone who has, anyone who's bought a home since 2008 or 2009, let's say, after Dodd-Frank, right,

you've either paid in cash or you've financed. If you finance, you have a 30-year fixed or a 15-year fixed, and that's a hefty monthly payment, or you've gotten an arm, a 5-1, a 7-1 or a 10-1 arm. In order to get an adjustable rate mortgage, you have to be approved at the 30-year fixed monthly. So maybe you've lost your job, et cetera. That'll always happen. But I think the rate of delinquencies is not nearly where it would need to be to cause, quote, unquote, a bubble.

A lot of the charge seem to show the housing prices outpacing income by like five times. Oh, yeah, for sure. But what do you think is causing that specifically? Do you think it's more so land scarcity or do you think it's government policy? I think there's policy and tax code that has both hurt and helped the American home buyer and home seller. If you think about like the capital gains right off, right? If you think like the joint married filing jointly, right, up to $500,000, that made a big difference in the 90s. You know, if you had a house for $500,000 in the 90s and you sold it, like that's, that's an expensive house.

Today, that is barely the starter price for a home in middle America, right? 277 cities in the United States right now, say a starter home is $1 million and above over almost 600. hundred cities have a luxury market that's 1.4 million above. Like that is crazy, but there's no right-offs for that, right? Like, what are you going to do? And so there's a lot of equity that people have built up in their homes and they're just not, they're just not, they're just not moving. And so asset prices continue to go up. You have boomers that don't want to sell. Where are they supposed to go? Anyone who has a two and a half percent loan that they've gotten at some point in time since 2009 to 2022, where are you supposed to go? So it's the lack of inventory that I think is

pushing pricing, um, uh, uh, on top of a very, very slow job growth market. So how are people able to afford living in New York City? Because I love New York. I go there as often as I can't. Well, you, but they're living there. They are. They're not just sitting vacant. You have plenty of people. You walk around Manhattan. You see plenty of people walking in, going to their apartment complex. A lot of it's sacrifice. You know, I don't know what the debt to income ratio is in let's say like greater Las Vegas. But, you know, you know, you know, most people live paycheck to paycheck in New York City, even at the luxury level. Like, they save very, very little because the quality of living is so, so, so high and the cost of living is so, so high.

At the luxury level, why would they not just go down and notch to be at, like, the sub-luxury level to be able to save a little bit of money? Or it's just like a character? Are we talking like short? We're talking like three, four million dollar condos. Yeah, people will live, like, we have clients who, when, you know, they have a budget, right? So they have $700,000 that they've saved already for renting that they want to put down in a down payment. And then we have to sit there and talk to them and like, okay, so after the 700 goes into the down payment, because you're going to put 20, 25 percent down, let's say. What do you have left?

Because we have to have reserves to get your loan. You're going to have your monthly payment over and over. What if there's, what if something happens, anything? And they're like, oh, well, it's fine. I'll just make more money. Like there's this idea that it's fine. I'll make more money. Or you can have alternative streams of income that it, that is.

that I think is new, right? That's a new feeling that people have not just at the $500 to $800,000 level, but at, like you said, at the $3, $4 and $5 million level. It's okay. I'll figure it out. I can always just make more money. And people don't want to live below their means. No, not everybody's this guy, right? People, it's not, but it's not fun. Below your means? I don't know if I live. I mean, I could, I could definitely spend a lot more, but I spend a lot of money to survive and to live. New York City. I've had this for a long time. But I don't look at this as an expense. I look at this as an investment. Every watch I've ever bought, which is not that many, is worth way more now than what I paid for it. Right. So I do look at certain things like invest, you know, as investments that way.

But I'm not insane with expenses. I grew up in, you know, the great recession of 08 and 09. Like, I know what it was like back then to not have money and to watch people be totally, totally, totally hurt. And I will never go back to that. Yeah. I listen to your podcast. that you did a while ago with Erica Colberg.

Back then, you said that you stretched yourself to buy a $3.5 million condo, and you really couldn't afford it. Correct. That your budget was like one and a half. You saw this, and it pushed you to work harder and make even more money. Yes.

You still follow that trajectory? Yeah, unfortunately, I have a problem. But it's working. So how are you applying that today? I started my own company five years ago. You know, like I try not to, I don't push myself into situations where, I could file for bankruptcy tomorrow.

But I think you have to push yourself into situations where you put your back up against the wall a little bit, that if you're in a career where you could be incentivized to make more money, and I don't give this advice to like my little brother, my little brother has a W-2 job who works nine to five. I guess he could do some nighttime investing. He could do what some of my other friends do. He could be crypto trading. Like he could have a weekend job shirt, always make more money. But then his quality of life and his focus would be incredibly fractionalized, both from like a mental health.

point of view and actually like a physical labor standpoint. So I don't do that. I think when you're in sales, your fate is what you make of it, right? You just have to make 10 extra phone calls. You can make 10 extra appointments. I could work seven days a week. And so I pushed myself to buy that apartment. It was 3.7. And then a year later, it was like, I could have gone bigger because I just made more. Then I bought my first, you know, big house. And that was 7.6. And that was terrifying. And then I got renovated it. And then when I was done, I was like, maybe it could have gone bigger. And then started my own company in 2020, just completely bootstrap for the four years and then

raise money for the first time in December to have strategic partnerships. I wasn't doing this 100% by myself. And I look at like what our expenses are now. And it's just mind boggling to where I was stressed about just a couple years ago. But we just keep pushing the envelope and keep pushing ourselves to the point where we look back a year before and we say, oh, okay, that wasn't so bad, you know, and it's worked so well for me anyway. So how has the market changed for you since 2020? There's a far bigger... Local news is in decline across Canada, and this is bad news for all of us. With less local news,

noise, rumors, and misinformation fill the void, and it gets harder to separate truth from fiction. That's why CBC News is putting more journalists in more places across Canada, reporting on the ground from where you live, telling the stories that matter to all of us. Because local news is big news. Choose news, not noise. CBC News. I'd say emphasis on thinking globally, then thinking hyper-locally. Like, pre-2020, when I was just in New York, like, I would have no need to sell anywhere else, right? Like, you have billions of dollars of real estate to trade in a three-block radius. You don't have to go anywhere else. You never have to get in a car.

You never have to travel. But since 2020, the market has become globally influenced. And if you match that with hyper local excellence, you can actually do so much more in so many places. Like I'm in Vegas today because we're opening our first Vegas location, like literally today. It's my 14th state. I don't know. In 2020, if you told me one day you'd be coming to Vegas, not just to do your awesome podcast, but to open a market, I would have said, really? Like, what does that even mean? Why would we

do that? And so that's one way the market has changed. And then also, what is money anymore? Like, the amount of trades we've done now on the residential side for over $100 million is crazy town. Like, the amount of people now that are buying at the $75, $80, $95 million mark for a secondary home, it's just, it's hard to, hard to fathom. The amount of wealth creation that's happened over the past five years since 2020 is completely insane and people put a lot of it back into real estate. So life has also changed that way. A lot of people speculate that the cost of housing is going up in places like New York City because foreign buyers are buying up like luxury condos or even buildings and just letting them sit vacant in New York. A lot of people think that.

Would you say that that is fact or that's just like a made up story? Categorically false. So that is not true. During the Obama years. completely true. Like why was that happening then and not now? A much cheaper dollar for sure, right? You had a much cheaper dollar. So it made a lot of sense for Canadians, French, Japanese, the Chinese, South Africans, South Americans, South Americans, to come into the United States and buy cheap real estate for a lot of reasons, okay? And so once Obama left office, the dollar started getting stronger. And so if you follow currency exchange, it stopped making as much sense. So then you had a lot of foreigners who bought during the

Obama administration, right, for eight years, who then started to sell because then they were making, you know, even if they were selling at, let's say, a break even in the United States, depending on the currency, you were making anywhere from 20 to 30 to 40 to 50%, 50%, depending on how you play the tax game here. Foreigners in New York City, for example, New York City, residential real estate is about 70% of the asset class. The majority of New York City is rent. Most of those buildings you see, are rental buildings owned by major landlords, okay? 30% of that is then for sale, so people can, you know, buy, sell condos,

co-ops, and townhouses. Most of that is all primary residence for New Yorkers. Most of New York City is bought and sold by people who actually live there. A lot of the big trades that we've done recently, like on the second season of owning Manhattan, which comes out December 5th, are all just wealthy, wealthy, wealthy New Yorkers.

The kids go to school there, and they want to have a great home. there's very little foreign investment, even though there's a lot of it, it just gets talked about a lot. And then it's the domestic U.S. purchasers and the New Yorkers who also just have other homes who leave them vacant or who keep the lights off at night. But there was a period of time where there was a lot of foreign investment. Like I remember a 30 rock episode back with Tina Fey back in the day, you know, in like 2006 or something where like one of the cold opens is her and I don't even know, her boyfriend on the show or something, looking at an apartment and they're like, yeah, we're thinking, I don't know.

And then like a Saudi guy walks in, he's like, I would also take this for my motorcycles and slams the door. And like, damn it, we lost another one. Those days are long gone. So then what would you say are the top like two or three things causing the rents to be so expensive? Inventory. Lack of inventory and the lack of incentive to build. So you talk about New York City today and what happened yesterday with the election, right? it is very, very easy to make promises on, on the ideology of taking.

Like you're hurting, I'm going to take from him, I'm going to give to you. Versus, you're hurting, I'm going to incentivize him to make more and create more for you. That just doesn't sound as great because when you're angry, you want people to be punished. It's so much easier to talk about punishing success than it is to incentivize it. And that's one of the biggest problems you have in predominantly blue states, which is why you've seen so much movement to Nevada and Florida, Arizona, where we opened a couple months ago. And so, you know, you, you, you just need people to be incentivized to create. It is so burdensome to build new homes, even if they're affordable in most markets now that people just don't do it. Like, there's other places to make money.

You don't need to do it. So there is a real lack of inventory. And then rates are high. Rates are high. So the cost of ownership is incredibly expensive. So what does it do to available inventory? It makes it more expensive. Yeah, I screwed up majorly.

I mentioned this in the Jason Oppenheim podcast. And it gets worse, Jack. You're not going to believe this. I was building out a two-bedroom, 720 square foot addition on a duplex that I own. And the whole process was supposed to take four months. Yeah. And how much was it supposed to cost? $200,000.

So we finish it. So the permit, that takes about three months to get approved. We build the thing in another three months. And I'm thinking, oh, this is super easy, no issues. Final inspection comes, fails because of an AC condenser line. We fix it. Next inspector comes back, different person, request more things. Never mentioned by the first guy.

Yeah. Fix it all. Disaster. Third time they come back. The guy says, okay, it looks great, but what about the sewer line? Do a sewer line inspection now. There's a one inch crack. when a sewer line meets the city sewer.

$22,000 to fix a sewer line. Yeah. $22,000. And so we go back and forth for a month saying, is there any way we could just permit the ADU without doing the sewer line? I'll do the sewer line later. No. So I go pull the permit for the sewer line.

Then they say, no, you have to wait 60 days, sorry, 75 days to pull the permit because you have to give your tenants 75 days advance notice because they're rank controlled. It doesn't impact them whatsoever. And it doesn't impact the ADU. So we say, okay, whatever, let's try to go around this. So we get someone from the city to come back to see if we could qualify for the exemption for the 75 days. That person says, you also have to replace 22 feet of the sidewalk because the city-owned tree is causing the sidewalk to kind of gap up a little bit. That's to make sure we want to own a home?

That's a tripping hazard. But guess what? That requires a urban forestry permit to trim the city-owned. tree roots. That requires 60 days. So I have to wait 60 days to fix 22 feet of the sidewalk to wait 75 days to fix the sewer line to permit the ADU. And the ADU is unmovable until you go and pull all these things. It's a nightmare. So I like, I'm over like 40 grand. Yeah. Just from these people going, oh, you got to do this. You got to. And there's no end in sight. It makes you, it just makes you want to buy real estate. I want to sell it. I want to sell every.

So I'm selling everything in Los Angeles. I just sold one. Yeah, yeah. So I'm going to sell them all. It's awful. I'll never do that again. It's a, it is a, it's a, it's a process, you know, what I hear most is like what happened to me when I bought my house, um, uh, is like, homeownership is just a consistent battle against water. It's always just water. There's a leak here. There's a leak there. There's a flood here. Something's happening. Global war, this, that, the other. It's, it's incredibly, incredibly expensive. It is still historically an amazing way to preserve wealth, right? Like if you have a long enough period of time on your spectrum, owning real estate in the United States is relatively pretty safe and relatively not volatile. And so people do do it.

And you have to live somewhere. But to invest in properties like that where you're a landlord and going through that entire process is just a total headache. And L.A. and New York City are equally as difficult. How do we make it as difficult as possible for you to, to be a great landlord here. Yeah. Right? And create housing for people. And that's what pushes up prices.

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not recommend you do it more with busy at busy.com slash ICH. That is B-I-Z-E-E-D-C-H. You can also just click the link down below the description to get started today. Busy.com, don't forget to slash icch. Thank you so much to Busy for sponsoring this episode. Does it make any sense to buy an investment property in New York City right now? Yeah, for sure. Right now, for sure. There's fear in the marketplace. You use it to your advantage. Buy great property. The best deals that have been done in New York City when buying an investment property. And it's sad to say in the last 25 years were the fall of 9-11, right, the fall of 2008, the fall of Hurricane Sandy when a lot of New York City was underwater and the majority of 2020. Because even New Yorkers

were saying that New York is over. And every single time the market has come back stronger. And every single time, the people that were courageous enough to go in and invest in what is, if you're buying Manhattan, an island of rock during those times took advantage of fear. Like when COVID hit, right, we were starting our company. I made that decision in 2019. And then I could, I was like, my train was moving too fast. I couldn't, I couldn't stop. So I was like, I guess we'll just do this. We just took us a couple extra months to launch.

I sold an apartment on 57th Street in a billionaires row. The guy was in it for, I think, $32 million. We sold it for 17. But the buyer, in May of 2020, there were bodies in Central Park. The Red Cross ship hadn't gotten there yet. Cuomo killing senior citizens all day long, right? Like, it was a dark time. And 17 million in that time was insane.

He was an idiot. Except he wasn't. He was the opposite. And he bought, and it's now probably worth $35 million. today, right? The same thing. We sold a penthouse in Soho. That fall, it had been asking $40 million.

We got it for 22 and a half. And that was a ton of money. Big discount, but discount to pre-COVID pricing, which every seller knew was over and done with. That apartment today is $50 million, even under the current political climate. So, like, there's, I think you always negotiate with fear as a fundamental in good markets

and in bad markets. And I think anyone who's smart and who has cash today is looking at a market like New York City and saying, where can I get a great deal? Jason Knop and I was saying the exact same thing with Los Angeles. It's like if you can put up with the headache and make real estate more active in terms of like active income than it usually is, you just got to grind away at it, then there is a lot of opportunity because people are just scared. They don't want to deal with the stuff that Graham's dealing with. That's very true. Santa Monica, it's crazy, is selling for 2014 prices for multifamily. In more than 10 years, it's not gone up a dollar, selling for less. Crazy.

So imagine owning real estate 11 years and taking a loss on it. Yeah. But nobody wants to do it, but it could be a good time. Yeah. Listen, you always just have to make the right decision based on what makes sense for you. If you're buying to fix and flip, you're not holding it for 11 years, right? If you're buying to actually live in it and you're going to break even and you just had your carry costs, like, you're going to live somewhere anyway. And rents are, there's parts of New York City now in a way that I've never seen before where it's more.

expensive to rent than it is to own and just hasn't been that way for a long, long time. So as long as there's some sort of government intervention on, you know, kind of on taxes in some way, shape or form for real estate, I think you could see a really, really big boom. How do you think Zoran Mamdani's policies are going to affect prices in New York? It remains to be seen. Listen, worst case scenario is New York City goes on a hold. COVID was six years ago, right? Like, it was a long time ago now, even though it doesn't feel that way.

And so New York City could go on pause, right? Which just means that not a whole lot changes. Prices don't go up. Prices don't really go down. There are always panic sellers. Like, there's, during tariffs, when Trump announced tariffs for the first time earlier this year, the stock market fell, right? It was a disaster. That whole weekend, he's playing golf.

Everyone's panicking. We had sellers agreed to deals in New York City that were just purely based on panic, 10% lower than what they could got. what they could have sold for 22 days later. But sellers just panic, right? Like fear fuels markets. So if you just stay calm and you just breathe, New York City has gotten through terrorist attacks, global recessions, global pandemics,

climate change, this, that, the other, way worse than a 33-year-old TikTok mayor. So, like, the worst that can happen is it slows down. I think what probably happens is you have a big pause on development, which means that anything under construction now, anything new, anything luxury today, just gets more valuable because it goes right back to supply and demand. What draws prices down, which is what he should do, is incentivize building, rezoning, create more housing, make a ton of it more affordable. The more housing you have coming to the market, the more pressure you're going to have on pricing. And then the more you're going to have to incentivize everybody else to lower prices, do this, do that, like Giuliani post 9-11, created a 421A and 421G tax abat in New York City. And everyone was up in arms.

And all it did is said, if you are willing to develop real estate in New York City so that people will live here and feel safe, you can defer all real estate taxes for 10 to 25 years, depending on the asset, right? depending on if you're going to build some public infrastructure, if it's a conversion, building this, that, the other. And it boomed New York because there was incentive to come back. It created new housing. New York City bounced back post the greatest terrorist attack on U.S. soil in history, right? So if he creates incentives, instead of taking away the opportunity to build, I think pricing could go to the roof. But if he just holds firm and pushes on a lot of his other policies, then New York City will probably just stay on pause for a second. great real estate will still sell. Other real estate will just sit tight and everyone will just wait out what happens. Does that also apply to freeze the rent? Yeah, he's talking to rent freeze and rent, rent stabilized and rent control departments. I mean, all that does, and I get it, like, I understand

why he won. I totally understand. It is unbelievably unaffordable. Not just for the whole, like, I mean, there are 350,000 people in New York City that are homeless. Like, I wear one of these bracelets it's on my wrist. Every dollar we sell from this one goes to the coalition for the homeless in New York City. And I push that as much as possible. Rent is high. Food is too high. Regular necessities are all too high. Health care is too high, even with Obamacare or how you use it.

Right? So I get it. Like if you're angry and someone comes out and says, I know why you're angry and I'm going to fix it, that guy. You vote for that guy. whether you know how he's going to do that or not, it doesn't matter. It's just someone who's aligning with your anger. Like, I totally, totally, totally get it.

Mirroring anger is probably the greatest way to the office ever. We saw Trump do it the same side. Mamdani is the left's version of Trump, right? It just took the hard left position, and a lot of people said, yeah. But if you talk to people right now is to great, awesome, how is this going to happen? No one has any idea. And nor do they really, really care. But I think if he focuses on creating instead of taking, we could have a great, great city.

And I hope he does, man. Like, there's only one New York. How would a rent freeze in New York City affect the prices? I don't know because it's, I don't think it's possible. So, like, I don't think there's a real case study in the U.S. anyway, definitely in New York. What a rent freeze will do is disincentivize anyone who actually owns set apartments to fix them. And so you go back to, like, New York City of the 60s and 70s, where you go. you have these derelict buildings with apartments that are falling apart,

hallways that are grabbed, light bulbs that are out, trash that's not picked up, and that then affects the sidewalk, which then affects the next building, that then affects the next building. And then developers come and say, well, I can't build on this block. These buildings are all disaster. That then affects the next building. And then these buildings go underwater because the rents are frozen, but you're not freezing interest rates.

You freeze rent. That's fine. But you're not freezing the rates. You're not freezing markets. You're not freezing time. And so who's going to fix all these apartments with what money? Like with what profit? You're just not going to do it.

And that's what happens. You know what I never understood is why rent control still applies to people who make several $100,000 a year. I thought it would be a great principle, at least better than the current system, is if you're making above a certain amount, you're not rent controlled. Because otherwise you have people that are making $200,000 a year that just happen to be in a rent control spot. because they happen to sign a lease in 2010.

Yeah. It's hard to get tenants out of apartments who are making more money. It does happen. Rent control was not set up for people who can afford free market apartments. It is what it is. How would you change the housing market

if you were mayor? The number one problem is lack of affordable inventory. That is it. So your number one goal should be to incentivize building. You do that through rezoning and developer build and tax credits.

It's not bad, it's good. And you also look at in New York City the number of New York State and New York City owned buildings. One of the things that Trump talked about this last time was the amount of federally owned land in the United States. And nothing's being done with it. So what could you do with that to create incentives to get builders to come and build 10,000 houses?

But you have to do a school and a grocery store and free fare buses. Sure, why not? To have the right to go build 10,000 houses? Well, sure, right? You want to create incentive, but it's not just the housing. Who's going to live in these houses? So then you have to follow some of the Bloomberg policies where he said, we are going to create incentives for businesses to come here to create jobs, right?

We're not going to disincentivize Amazon to bring 10,000 W2 workers here, which is exactly what New York City did and said, hey, you can, afford to pay taxes and they say we're going to pay taxes we're going to bring 10,000 jobs here and then he went to another state right um you would create incentives for companies to come from all over the country to say new york city is the absolute greatest place to innovate you create innovation awards you want new york city to be on a pedestal where people say i couldn't start my my career anywhere else because all the major employers are actually in new york city they're incentivized to be there they have tax credits because they created 10 20 30 34

50, 100,000 new jobs every single year, right? There's 125,000 babies born in New York City every single year. We should be creating through government incentives that many new jobs on top of what the private markets are already creating. Why would you not do that? Why is creating opportunities seen as such a bad thing? Who else is going to pay for everything? 50% of the tax revenue in New York City is paid for by 1% of the taxpayers. What do you do, if you do, if that 1% goes to another state. Every state is its own company, right? New York is a company with a CEO, a C-O, a board, right?

California, Nevada, it's its own company. All of your residents are employees. That's what they are. And you have to incentivize your C-suite, the same way you have to incentivize your interns to want to be there. You should all be focused on making the greatest Yelp scores, right? Glassdoor reviews should be the absolute best. But they don't do that, right?

Where are the bloated budgets? Where can you cut it down, create inefficiencies, and just create incentive to build? That will lower prices. That'll create more housing. And if you combine that with more jobs, you would have not just the healthiest housing market, but you'd have one of the healthiest markets in the U.S. I feel like if I was the owner of some commercial property in New York, that I would just be better off converting it into a bunch of tiny apartments.

Yeah. Because then you don't have to actually pay for labor. Or is there like some sort of like permitting and restrictions for that? Yeah, there's cost. To actually just, like, put up the walls and all of that. Yeah, but it's also zoning. Like, there's a lot, that's, I go to zoning. There's, there's, I don't know it's going to all zoning, but New York City is zoned in different ways to stop from like a thousand foot tower coming up on every block.

Okay. So there's process, and I appreciate that. Most commercial buildings are in commercially zoned districts and blocks and neighborhoods where you'd have to go through a rezoning process to be able to convert it to residential, to bring. break it up into 100, 200 different residential tax slots. And then you understand most of these commercial buildings are no longer built to code because they're older. And they have office footprints. So like it's 100 by 200 feet with a center core. What that means is to turn that into residential, you're going to have like 2,000 square foot railroad apartments with one window.

And so a lot of these commercial buildings would be awesome to turn into residential apartments. but they weren't built to be residential. They were built for trading floors. They were built for cubicles. They were built for inner conference rooms or whatever they would do there. And it just becomes really, really, really hard to make those make sense.

A lot of that did happen in 2002 to 2007. Some of those buildings worked out. Some of those didn't really work out. Would you support micro apartments being made? Super, super high density, like apartments that are the size of this room right here. And that's it. This room, for the record, guys,

is pretty tiny. Like, it's small. Yeah. I would. The market doesn't really like them, though. Really? They've existed. They've existed.

There's micro hotels. Like you stayed at an Arloh hotel. You know, in those Arlo rooms, you walk in, you put your bag down. It's like sink, toilet, shower, fall forward. You're in a bed. The problem is people will just pay more to have a hotel room. So people can somewhat afford it in New York City. For sure.

They can afford it in a lot of markets. And there are just cheaper but larger options, like to create. create brand new micro apartments today is still incredibly expensive and will cost more per room than a kind of crappier, older, but larger with more room, hotel room. So people will just end up choosing the older, bigger option than the brand new option. One of the things I appreciate about at the Vegas market so much, why I'm excited to be here, is if you think about luxury, let's say like 5 million plus, the average $5 million home in Las Vegas is 7,800 square feet. the average $5 million home in the United States

is like 5,500 square feet. It's like a 40% Vig on size of space, which is great. Like people, especially post-COVID, want more room, right? They want to grow. They have 15 Halloween trees, you know, and 12 new cats. Like, they need their space, you know, to grow through. Way to calm me out, man. I think I love it.

It's great. It's awesome. Just like 12 Teslas in the front yard. It's great. People want their space in Vegas, which I just think it's super, super cool. Like, especially coming, you know, as a New Yorker myself to come into a really, really cool growing market that has tons of incentive to be here, to then also just be able to breathe in space. I think it's just, it's awesome.

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There's corporate incentives, right? Vegas incentivizes businesses to want to be here to grow and to build, which then incentivizes employees to want to be here because they get to keep more of their income, which then incentivizes people don't want to go to school here, have babies here, etc. And a lot of our other markets, we are seeing a lot of money and people moving into Vegas. So it just made the most sense for us to be here. Do you think you're going to see another wave of people move to Vegas after the recent election? Vegas is far from New York.

I think my biggest market is New York. My second biggest market is the entirety of the state of Florida. Yeah. It is just a beast. And it has not slowed down. and we are already in and dated with calls. And we have been since he won the primary. And it's fine, right?

Markets come, markets go. A lot of people will go to Florida. Or they'll go to Westchester. They go to Greenwich. They go to Long Island. Or they stay because New York City is awesome. And it's the greatest city ever. And there's, listen, we've had eight, nine, seven, twelve.

We've had 12 years of ineffective mayors anyway. Two terms of de Blasio is this, whatever. Adams who passed garbage cans to all look the same. That's at least one thing I know that he did. So nothing else has really happened. And New York's still there. People are buying record numbers of homes. Restaurants are packed.

You can't get reservations. It's insane. It's still the coolest place to be. It doesn't go away. And so I'm incredibly bullish on New York. And what I think people just need to understand is everyone wants lower prices. Always. New York's too expensive, right?

They just don't want what comes with lower prices. Sometimes it's a pandemic, sometimes it's a recession, sometimes it's a hurricane, sometimes it's an election. So you can't take the good and not deal with the bad. You get better prices. It comes with something else you might not like. Guess what? You lock in the price, you lock in that value. Everything else is temporary.

Politicians come and go. Cities are built by people, not politicians. There is a cool vibe to New York that when you arrive there, like everyone's doing something. Yeah. Everyone, like, you go down to the, Oh, they're definitely doing it. To the sidewalk. And everyone's just like out and about.

Yeah. And there's a certain energy about New York that I don't think is replicated anywhere else that I've seen. No, I tell my wife all the time, too, because I travel a lot, right? We're opening all these markets. Um, as much as I love every other market that we go to, I am incredibly lonely everywhere else. Like, you're just all in cars or in destinations. There's never any sense. of belonging just from being.

Like, you know, I'm not, I've yet to, like, take a walk down the sidewalk here. Now, there's nothing here. You know? There's no point to going to walk in. Even in L.A., like, you can. Certain cities. Certain cities. But, like, even then, you have your home, you have your car, you have your place of work,

and then everything else is a destination. New York City is the destination, which just as lonely as they say it is, at any given point in time, you could meet 100 people you'd never met before that could change your life. And I think there is something like very comforting about that. So what are you seeing for the future of the Vegas market? Like, why open up here specifically? Our clients asked us to, you know, like we listen to where we have customer demand. I have certain criteria that we hit to open a marketplace.

So we hit that criteria here really, really quickly. And both the buyers, the sellers, the developers, there's a lot of money in the East Coast that's coming to develop here and the agents. really, really, really wanted us to be here. And so we're here. I think the market just gets stronger. I understand that when markets are bad in a market like Vegas, it's real bad. And when it's great, it's really, really good. But markets, again, they don't last forever. And in our business, we trade on the way up and we trade on the way on the way down. So I don't know. I'm excited. We have a, we have a huge, huge presence in Arizona. A lot of their market share comes out of, you know, Vegas and kind of the Pacific Northwest as we start to go for or northwest. And I just think it's a great place to have an amazing operation and to be able to do

great business and to refer people left and right. And I'm excited. And there's no one here that really does things the way we do them, which is just nice and weird. Yeah. How much success in real estate comes down to timing versus strategy? I like to think it's strategy because I like to think that I can't control the timing. Like in hindsight, it's all in the timing. Like we we started the business in the depths of COVID. Great timing. At the time, worst timing of all time. But looking back, oh, wow, that was like really, really great timing. You get in at the bottom. There's no fanfare, and you get to just ride the market, especially the COVID housing market, all the way up. I try not to focus on timing at all. I don't think you can time the market. I think people who try to

time the market are people who also like don't buy convertibles because, oh my God, it could rain. That's not a great way to live life. So I think if you just, have the right strategy and you just move forward slowly but surely you'll hit good markets you'll hit bad markets but at the end of the day you'll come out on top what does your current portfolio look like now i own real estate in new york um we buy and we sell real estate as we see good deals um a lot of my life has gone into building this company over the past five years even though we raised money last year i i have a wealth advisor that that tracks a lot of stuff i have a separate guy that does all my crypto stuff.

I stay pretty asset light for the most part. Do you think that you would have been better off just holding all of your real estate as opposed to buying and selling? No, not really. I'm not like a serial real estate investor either. I'm like too in the business. You know, I'm on the brokerage side

when you do it all day long, you see good deals and you want to jump on them. But at the same time, like, I like investing in other stuff that's not real estate, just because I spend some, much of my life in the real estate business. What's your craziest investment that you've made?

Craziest investment to the most random investment I made where I've already sold like 50% of my position is probably outside of like all the crypto stuff and all that into major league pickleball when it was first formed, went into a team with Drew Breeze, L.A. Mad Drops and that was just such a random kind of like, really? How did you pick that? I just ended up knowing people. Like I just know I have a lot of clients through real estate who just do lots of different things. And it just seemed like a good early opportunity.

I feel like we all miss early opportunities all the time because they're just like, I don't know, I don't know. And I didn't really want to miss another early opportunity. And it's worked out so far. How does it work out investing in buying a pickleball team? Just to do sports teams people buy, they buy and trade into shares of said teams or said league all the time. Like, you don't actually see it all the time, but every NFL, NBA, MLB team, NHL team, like very rarely are the teams just sold to a new billionaire? A lot of times, I'll say you 10% for a billion, a lot of this, that, the other.

I have a friend who works at a major, major private equity firm, and they're doing a $3 billion financing of one of the major teams right now. You know, you probably never read about it. And so it's tax efficient, and people buy into it. Like, hey, I want to buy 50% of that team. I'll keep everybody whole. I'm blah, blah, blah, blah. That's what Patrick Bad David did.

Yeah. And there's a huge tax incentive. My understanding is that you could bonus depreciate quite a bit of a sports team. I'm not exactly sure how it works, but basically almost your entire investment could be written off and then deferred quite a bit. You guys should buy a sports team. What's the minimum? What sports team should we buy? And yeah, how much do you need?

As you go into like intramural soccer, like maybe volleyball. Volleyball is a big. Indoor soccer team. We would make an indoor soccer team. Indoor a soccer day. I do. Yeah. There's a game tonight, actually.

Are you on the team? I'm on the team. Should we invest in you? Is that basically what you're asking for? Well, if you want to throw money at me, you know, maybe I'll get a goal. Maybe I won't. Probably not. We're not very good.

We only have some winners over here, man. This is our second season. I think we've won one game. Really? Oh, no. Keep it up there, buddy. Thanks, man. Any day now.

Yeah, we'll see. It was like me playing sports when I was at school. Like, one day, Ryan. So how much, how much do you need then to buy a picture? I mean, everybody, you know, at that time, it was cheap, man. It was, I mean, those teams were a million, something like that. Today, they're far, far more expensive as the leagues have just grown. But at the same time, I mean, everything's a sport.

Like, everything can be, can be traded. Maybe, I mean, the craziest is, like, I, there is a meme of me for a million-dollar listing years ago. And I think this was 2013. And like I said, I'll buy it for you. please present my offer $9 million in Bitcoin in 2013. And the seller said, are you crazy? Never present that type of offer. That's monopoly money.

Never do it. I think it's like $2 billion today, something like that, right? So do you still talk to that seller? Yes, I do still talk to that seller here and there. But you have to understand what the world was at that time. Like in 2013, and it wasn't so much him saying no to Bitcoin. It was he's a mortgage. And he had like a $5 million loan with J.P. Morgan who was never going to take Bitcoin as a payoff.

So what do you do? Like you can't actually do anything. Anyway, we sold it using, you know, real money at the time. And then I had a friend who is a big crypto trader who I always thought was crazy. And he convinced me to go heavy into Bitcoin when it was at $3,000. And then again, when it was at $16,000. And those will probably forever be my greatest investments of all time. And those will just be held on a cold wallet. And I'll bury them in a treasure chest. And Morgan Freeman will find them. What are those crypto people saying now? Do they ever give you tips and say, like, hey, now is a good time to sell?

No, not yet. Not yet. Not yet. I don't spend a whole lot of time on it now. But nothing recently that, like, jumps out to me now. Are there any other tips, though, that, you get, just being around such wealthy people that maybe you're on a private jet with a billionaire who's saying, hey, by the way, we're going to be going heavy in this area.

I think that there's a term for that. I don't know what it is. No, it's not insider trading to say, hey, we're planning a development here. Or just like, you know, I like this. I'm going heavy in oil this month. Yeah, I mean, I hear some of that stuff here and there. A lot of our clients are private equity and they end up controlling the markets. Like, you know, we sit buy and sell homes for lots of, lots of those guys.

they are market movers, right, with what they can do. I remember distinctly being with a couple people who, when it was called machine learning, AI was a major investment, and this is pre-chat GPT rollout three years ago, and talking about a little company that was a nonprofit called Open AI. I remember that conversation distinctly. I mean, that was a bit over my head at the time. And they were really, really kind of bullish on what was going to happen, also into Google, You know, like, also with like self-driving cars, like Waymo is just Google.

Those are just Google cars, right? Just branded as Waymo. I remember those conversations, too. Listen, I think the future is in probably generative AI applications across the board, amongst other things. How is the average type of rich person changed over the past 10 years? I imagine with AI now becoming a thing, you have a lot of people doing these like vibe decoding startups buying million dollar penthouses in New York.

Yeah. I guess not million dollars. Yeah, way more than a million. Way more than a million. $50 million pen houses, yeah. I'd say the wealthy have gotten younger and the opportunity to make that kind of money has become somewhat, I used to think it was like a gamble, but now it feels somewhat more like a meritocracy.

If you're incredibly smart and you find it there, there, there are incredible paths towards towards wealth, right? as you just said, like there's, you know, you just, and you don't have to reinvent the wheel. You just have to make a better one. Like that, I think is what gives me a lot of comfort in whatever we're building and what other other people are building. Like, you don't have to go and invent something new. You just have to make a better new.

And I think young people see friction and they also have less to lose, right? It's not like they're giving up their jobs and they've got a wife and three kids and tuition payments. They're like, I'm 26 years old. why not try and go swing for the fences? It would be way cooler if I could have something that does an X and a Y. I would say the consistency with incredibly wealthy people, though,

is their value of time. They just text. The amount of the size of deals I do that are, you know. Do they take calls often? No. No. Oh, that's interesting.

Yeah, that's really interesting. I keep talking up. Expand on that one a little bit more. I just sold something. I hate some. I just sold a place in Florida. I guess when the deal is all set and done, so it's like $210 million all over text.

And I literally could go on my phone and I have a note to him. I'm like, you know, it would be easier if you could just give me a call and I could walk you through and he wrote back, don't take it personally. Time is the greatest asset.

I was like, I get it. But like, okay. Seems like a smart guy. I've clearly figured it out. But like they don't, and part of it too is for liability. everything I say is now in text. So I can't just get on the phone and be like,

blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Everything is in writing when you do things by text. So I think you're protected that way. And contracts are still done through do docuSign and email and lawyers and anything that's really, really important they'll do over the phone with legal. But as far as I'm concerned,

everything stays in writing and it stays in text because it's just quicker and to the point and it's harder to BS. You know, like if someone sends you an essay of a text, you're like, dude, you're full of shit. If they just tell you what the facts are, you're like, I get it. On the phone, though, that could be phrased is,

let me, let me podcast you for a bit as to why you should buy this. And you're like, okay, don't convince me, just give me the facts. How often do you get fake buyers who pretend to want to buy like a $20 million place? All the time. All the time. It's a flex. It's always the guy who then brings a girl and he's looking at something for $40 million. And yeah, I'm going to wire you this.

There's so much wire fraud, bank fraud. Like, it's just gross. It's so annoying. We just had it. We've had it multiple times this year. You know, I think we've become much, much more adeptive trying to smell things out. But con artists have become very, very capable, like, very, especially with AI now. Like, the bank statements are amazing.

They can get bankers on the phone, but it's just AI, like fake everything. And you just don't know. And then the money never hits. And it's just all bullshit. What's the point of doing that? And like getting to the very end and then the money. To feel cool. sometimes what I used to think it was,

especially when it's foreigners, is they take a contract and they sell it overseas. So they'll say, listen, I've got this $20 million place for $12 million. Give me $10,000, come in on it with me. And they'll use that contract to sell, to sell people, and they'll steal money from other unsuspecting individuals.

A lot of times, though, it's just someone who's crazy and they like to feel important. And so a real estate agent, if everything checks out, the bank state they call the banker it's fake you know there's wild stories they take you go to dinner i'll send you a car yeah no problem i'll put you up in my hotel no problem you oh your budget's 50 million oh absolutely oh your girlfriend's so beautiful yeah i'm happy to give you my discount at the store

and they do that for a week and then they just ghost and they just do that city after city after city how do you how do you get that though there's career fake buyer there's career con artists there's career assholes there's career dirt bags yeah of course so are you good at then reading these people out? You try. I mean, what are the signs you look for? Um, uh, name dropping. They talk too much. Most of the time, they talk too much. Obviously, so that's, that's one, that's early on in a phone call, okay? Um, they also talk on the phone. Um, two, ungoogulable. Like, if you're buying something, you're saying, you have a budget of over $10 million, and I can't find you anywhere. If you're social, sketchy, if you're, if you're not really

Googlable, if the money comes from your mom or your grandmother, or, or came from this or a settlement here or there, like, eh, right? And then you'll get a bank statement. Sometimes you want to check a proof of funds. And instead of calling the number on the bank bank statement, you just call the bank, right, on your own phone number. And you call and say, hey, does this person work here? And you try to talk to them. And oftentimes they don't exist.

So those are, those are some of the pretty easy ways to double check. But it does, it does still happen. Like, we just had a case someone, a known guy in a town that we sell in in Florida. like goes to the gym with our agents, been around, seemed totally, totally normal. He said he wanted to buy a vacation property to rent out, right? He wants he's getting into the hotel and hospitality business. $90 million.

Has a banker, has everything. The money's there. No problem. Gets his attorney to put on attorney letterhead that money is in escrow for the down payment, which I think at that point, it was 5%. So it was like four and a half million dollars. Just telling the attorney, hey, I'm going to wire to you tomorrow. I want to lock up the deal.

Can you just let them know that it's here? It's going to be here. And the attorney was like, yeah, sure. So we have this attorney letter, four and a half million dollars in escrow. We go to our sellers and say, hey, this deal is legit. It's an attorney letter. Let's move forward. The guy's normal.

We see him around town all the time. And slowly but surely, we're like, hey, when are you going to release the, oh, another issue with the contract. Okay. Let's work through it. Like we're holding the property off market. Okay, what about that? Oh, I need to do another revision.

here, there, here, there, 30 days, money never was ever in escrow and never ever came through. He stopped checking his phone. He started calling us under a different phone number, started dodging, meeting in town, even though he was there. And the whole thing was fake. Even, he never sent Fed reference numbers, which is wire fraud, but he was sending emails. Like, no, I told my attorney to wire the funds. I'm going to fire that attorney. Let me get back to you.

That buys 48 hours, right? Because we're like, oh, see, okay. and then you sit there and you wait and you call and the number's been discredit oh yeah dude my my wife she never remembers to pay the T-Mobile bill and what do you do especially if it's a normal person you see in town all the time you're like ah I get it but this is starting to get weird I don't know and then he shows up and he's in a Mercedes he's like yeah let's go do the inspection uh is it cool you go to dinner and he's your client so you're like I guess I pay for it but this is weird yeah yeah that just happened 90 million

dollars completely fake money is there going to be a like a lawsuit or anything no what would the lawsuit be over fraud or something i don't know but he never sent a fed reference number you can't do that and they're very very very very smart about it if you send a fake fed reference number you can be indicted for wire fraud if you just are talking about hey yeah i sent the money i'm gonna send it even if you send a dollar like what are you going to do sit in court for three years to talk about a guy that was just a dick like sell it to somebody else it is it is buyer and seller beware at the end of the day What's the biggest scam you've seen in real estate recently? Scam?

Um, uh, like one thing that we used to, we talked, spoke about quite extensively was like the squatter issue that California is facing where it's like a, a civil case. And so you can't get the police involved.

You can just forge a fake lease document and then live there and then file bankruptcy and extend your stay and, you know, play your cards to get like a place for free for a year. I fortunately try to, to stays far away from scams and cons as I possibly can. And I don't read about them as much. And I've never really been caught up in one other than like what we were just talking about. So I, so I, so I don't know. Common ones though, wire fraud that someone will pretend to be an escrow company.

They find the buyer's info. We'll send them wire instructions. Oh yeah. It's wild. And then the buyer wires the money. They fish the email. Fake account. Yeah. Yeah. And then escrow calls, hey, we never got the money. I sent two million dollars yesterday. What do you mean you didn't get it. And they don't do the voice verification. That happened to one of our clients. The attorney's email was hacked. No one knew. An email came into the attorney's email from who they thought was the seller because it had almost an identical email address. It's like people who send at Microsoft emails, but it's at RN, I, et cetera, so it looks like an M when you look at it really, really closely. And it had all the numbers. The numbers were all correct. And the bank and information

and wire and he just had a paralegal who sent out the money gone forever insurance claim they never got it no completely gone there's nothing you can do just gone and so and if you don't call to double check that's why you always have to call wire fraud is real all emails can be hacked right it's messed up um so that happens well unfortunately gosh the big one that's happening now in california is the uh legal claims against landlords where they say the unit's uninhabitable strike it with uh uh habitable uh habitable strike it with uh a habitable The debatibility lawsuit and then try to settle it. Yeah. Disaster.

Yeah. People are the worst. I don't know what to tell you. You know, people are the worst. Difficult, difficult, difficult. So what do you think are the biggest opportunities going forward today? Like, where do you see them? It could be in real estate.

It could be just overall. It could be different areas that you see. Just different opportunities if someone either has money or they want to get into something. What are you seeing from your perspective? I still think real estate is an amazing, amazing opportunity, especially in what we do. I think getting into brokerage is great now compared to where it used to be because you can sell anywhere to anyone on any device. And it's all just about what you know. It used to be incredibly expensive to be a successful real estate agent.

Like you just have to take out ads, right? You have to be there in person, the stuff. Like it just was a real investment. And you don't know if you're ever going to get paid today because it is so digital and you can be licensed in so many different states. And all you have to do is build a community. and you can do that through content and collaboration, like you can have an incredible life and an incredible career. So I think that's one for sure.

Other great opportunities for money that are outside of the real estate world. I don't know. I'm probably the wrong guy to what do you think? Well, you see a lot of wealthy people. I do. So I imagine you kind of have a good finger on the pulse of like what's generating money right now. Right now, we just had a conversation about this before. like the two main drivers are AI and the data lake underneath AI.

So not just a wrapper or an application, right? So anything that's actually going to create efficiencies in some way, shape, or form. And then anything that is heavy, heavy, heavy on in real life service. So what we do is kind of in real life service. You're giving absolutely great high support. It's high cost, but it's high support. AI can create really, really low cost, right? Low support, but it's low cost and can hit mass market.

Everything in between, I really, I really don't know. But those two territories seem like they're pretty strong over the next five years. For my perspective, you ask me, I think YouTube advertising for businesses, we had so many great ideas that we could implement that'll cut down marketing by like 95% for businesses. Like this podcast, as an example, is probably going to bring you at minimum a few clients that will end up buying because they see that, oh, he's licensed in Vegas. Yeah. Let's go to Sirhant because that's where I want to buy or sell.

Sure. I guarantee it'll be a few. But imagine now focusing in on just that and creating now a podcast designed around the Vegas market. Sure. And then implementing YouTube because it's free reach. You could get so many clients by doing that and then apply that to any other business that you could operate at scale with people.

Huge opportunity. And the thing is all these established businesses, they've been doing their old way for like 30 years. they don't have any idea how YouTube works. But I think YouTube is the future and it's free distribution. If you just do it well, you get so much organic reach

where people come to you. You don't have to advertise anymore. Even over the next five years, YouTube long form versus short form. Yes, yeah, especially the short form. Because what's great about long form is that you could turn every long form episode into like 20 short form.

So this episode might get 300,000 views long form, but we could get 30 million views short form. And then on clips, we could probably get another, three million views on like eight to ten minute clips. I think we should all just become streamers. That would be the easy thing. They make a lot of money.

Dude, they made so much money. Streamers who then gamble. Oh, you met I ShowSpeed. So I am 41. So I Show Speed is not my demographic. Did not, I mean, of him, but didn't really know what that was all about. I have never experienced that, the streamer world, or anything along that line of popularity in my life shut down entire streets of New York City just as he walked. It's insane.

Kids watching the live stream all over Manhattan, knowing where he is live, which is a thing, which is like a little bit scary, looking out the buildings in New York City, seeing him running downstairs, flooding out of buildings to get to him as he's moving through New York City, your chaos, wild community, just like live, right, with 50, 100, 150,000 people just watching live right now and tracking your movements and you're making money on that. If I could go back in time, I would stream. I think I might stream. I don't get. How is that not a security issue?

It is. That's why they walk around with massive, massive, massive security. I understand. But still, when you're walking down buildings everywhere and someone could say, oh, he's here. I could go up to a 20th story or what. I'm just saying it's... No, it's entirely scary. And you don't want anyone to know where they live.

Who's a nutcase. We had that with I Show Speed. Someone came... We were showing him a $40 million pound house during his 30-day live stream where he just was streaming for 30 days and sleeping on a bus, I guess. Comes in, comes out.

Some kid who knew he was there, because it's live, comes from around the corner, runs up, past his security, jumps up, grabs him in the head, rips his hat off to steal his hat, just wanted his hat sprints up Amsterdam Avenue his security goes after him but he just got away stole his hat but like could you imagine if it wasn't just to get his hat like it is it was a little bit of a scary scary situation but um but that's his career man it's it's it's nuts i think he's got

to be safer i see that's why i just think i just think risk it's too risky you should start streaming 24-7 no come on man you should start streaming 24th I saw that and went back to the office to everyone in studios. I'm like, just studio is, no, I'm going to stream now. Everyone put on a battery pack, backpack, okay, and you're just going to follow me around all time. Don't tell my wife, we want to tell anyone else. It's just going to be happening.

It's just streaming. I'm just streaming the bathroom. I'm going to stream at home. Slowly but surely, people are just going to watch and I'll make $600 million a year. It's totally fine. You would make a killing doing a sleep stream. Dude, that's insane. Yeah.

And just while you sleep. It's terrible. It's brain brain rock awfulness. But I don't get who's actually watching kids. Because they don't have cable. They can't afford any of the networks, right? You have, we talked about the unaffordability crisis. They're incredibly alone.

They're incredibly, incredibly angry. And they have streamers to watch for free, mostly, right? 24 hours a day that they're directly connected to. And that's their friend and they're with them all day, every day. There is a connection there that no celebrity or musician or athlete has ever been able to create until this moment in time right now. You can say it's incredibly messed up, right? But I think a lot of these streamers feel like a deep connection to their audience in a way that like our generation doesn't or my generation doesn't, right?

We have audiences. Streamers have deep communities and it's been pretty insane to watch, but you have to be willing to sign up your entire life. Did anything surprise you about Ice ShowSpeed? Although really quick, I just want to say that every hour you're dealing with payroll and benefits is an hour that you're not growing your business. That is why our sponsor, Gusto, is a lifesaver because they could handle the boring stuff while you could get back to the money-making stuff. So I've actually used Gusto long before they even sponsored the podcast.

In fact, it was when I first started making money online, like back in 20, 25 years ago. That's crazy. It was when I first created my S-Corp, Gusto was there to help. And, guys, I literally had no idea what I was doing, from tax filings to deadlines. it was extremely overwhelming. But Gusto was there. They walked me through step by step the entire process, and I've been using them ever since.

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description. Thanks again to Shopify for sponsoring this episode. Did anything surprise you about Ice ShowSpeed? He's super fast. I saw that happen in real life. I would say how nonchalant the entire operation was, and it's an operation because you never go down and the battery backpacks. So how many people did he have a run, have around himself? Ten? Ten? Because you have the craters, you have him, you have all the, you have his producers, you have the different follow vans that are following him around that just have things for him and stuff, the entire security team who are humongous men, you know, just protecting him because people are completely insane. You know, his brothers with him, he's got a fan, like it's just, it's just, the operation was just

insane. And because the operation is so large, it creates more chaos. Like, if I walk down New York city, even just as me, right? Like by myself, people will recognize me, but no one cares because I'm just going to work. If I decided I'm going to have seven people plus four security guards walk with me, just that, that operation will create people being like, well, I need to go. What's happening? And it just creates more chaos. It was nuts to watch. How much do you think I Show Speed makes? $50 million a year. I think it's more than that. I think it's more than that, too. Yeah. My guess is probably $100 million. That's what I was going to say. Yeah.

Really? Yeah. Why are we not streaming? Like, what are we doing with jobs? Things are feeling a little less human these days, aren't they? But isn't the whole point of progress to make things more human? That's why, at TD, when we design a product, whether it's an app for making trading easier or monitoring your account for fraud,

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You know what I mean? It's like, well, why did you not do that, man? I don't know. Well, why are you playing soccer on a losing team? You could be a multi-trillionaire. There's only one I show speed and there's only one Palantier. You know, there's on, maybe if you said like, well, I should stream because, you know, this like 50th.

streamer. That I could do. You could. I don't know if people would want to see. Why would anyone have a job anymore if you can just go on your phone and make money? It seems like you want to do anything but sell real estate. I don't know what's telling you from doing this. I'm uniquely.

I'm uniquely, dude, I have a life. I am uniquely. I'm so interested in how other people have carved paths. Like that's, that's it. Like how do other people build businesses? How do other people creating, creating, creating, different entities like how what even is a streamer and how long can you do that like the rest of your life you can stream your wedding like is that possible and then what changes like as the next

generation grows up is my daughter who's six years old is she going to watch streamers like what is what is she going to watch what's the weirdest way you've ever seen someone get rich that what everything we're talking about streaming streaming only fans it's got to be like a unique business that you're like i can't believe they made money with that oh but it's always the most random things. We had this billionaire family out of Ohio who like made the straws. Straws. Like they're the company that just made straws. Another guy we dealt with him had a massive, massive company. He was the guy that created all of the betting for like every brand you know. Ralph Lauren bedsheets, Calvin Klein, bed sheets, Tommy Hilfiger bedsheets, pillowcases. At the end of the day,

it's always one dude in Asia. You know, and like that is. It's just like, really? Really? It was all just you. But another guy who created the interior, so not the thing your foot hits and not the rubber, but that inner piece in every sneaker. And his son is named Nick, and he flips properties left and right, just with the foot sole money or whatever that was called. I can't remember exactly. It was like, really? Like, yeah, we just invented that little layer. I'm like, how much money does you make? And they were like, all the money. So I got a unique one. So I started a group called The Index, where we have business owners and entrepreneurs who join. Okay. And we get some really interesting applications and people in the group. And one of them, you know, when you go to gas stations around Fourth of July or holidays, you see the fireworks stands. Yeah, yeah.

You make seven figures a year running the firework stand operations. We go into a gas station. Nice. And it's just a few weeks to a month out of the year. And, of course, they're hustling beforehand. and to make sure they sell the inventory. But that alone is a million-dollar business. Yeah.

It's like the umbrella guys in New York City. Like, they just sit there and they wait. They see the weather report and like, we making money this week, baby. They just get excited with their terrible umbrellas. It's a big thing. Everything is a business. There's always a there there. You just do it a little bit better than the last guy.

And you can make moves through social now. Like, you can do big things. Yeah. So I'm curious in terms of starting and running a company. What are your tips for hiring? someone and making sure someone is good. Oh, God. I make sure that I only hire people, one who are incredibly smart, but two, who are uniquely qualified to do exactly what I need them to do. The biggest issue with hiring people I found is unspoken expectations, trying to hire people

who are going to do exactly what you think you want them to do without actually telling them what to do. So I hire people who are uniquely qualified. And as long as they're intelligent, you give them enough runway to just go and build. I then have a four, kind of a four-step process in their 30, 60, 90. And you say, like, follow this, especially like for your team or for anyone else. Step one is you have to establish credibility while you're here immediately. Why are you here? Why did you get this job?

Otherwise, no one's going to want to work with you, right? Step two is you have to earn respect. You just have to earn respect. And whatever way you're going to do that in your own department. Step number three is you have to gain trust. Trust and respect are not created equally, right? And step number four is you have to perform a magic trick. If you want to be successful with this company,

you have to do something that everybody else around you didn't know was possible. That could be as simple as an Excel formula. Today, a lot of times it's like, oh, we have this, I found this AI tool that's going to save you half an hour a day, an hour a day. That's a magic trick. Or the ability to pick up a phone and call somebody that the rest of the team has been trying to reach out to, but you happen to know them because your daughter's this, that, or the other. Like, you do those four things. You will be wildly successful. And if you make my life easier

by removing things off of my plate, game over from there. How many people do you currently have working with you? Staff is like 190. Wow. Yeah, agents are like 1,500, I think at this point. How much of a mental drain is that to have so many people to think about or to manage or different touching points throughout the day. I don't think about all of them all day long. I mean, to be honest, right? Like I have kind of like anything else. Like you build out your sports team. I have my executive team and I do my absolute best to have great leadership. That's probably was my hardest learning lesson because I was very involved with absolutely everybody. And I didn't have the right leadership in certain spots. I was like, why are there cracks over here? How come

that function isn't functioning? I don't, I just don't get it. And people just need direction. they want to be inspired, they want to know why they're waking up every day, they want to be paid fairly, they want to have good culture, and they do need direction. Matter what, if someone has a job, they do want to be told what to do, and then know where they're going, right? Otherwise, they'll slowly kind of phase out or quiet quit. So you've got to have the right leadership and push forward. And then I let the leadership around me across all of the functions within the business, you know, report up to me and let me know what I need to know and do little things like, hey, Ryan, just we have like a weekly meeting for leadership. and we don't just go through numbers, we go through, like, company wins. So that way the whole leadership team knows, like, oh, the brand new graphic designer

crushed it on something because she got it done before anyone else said it was supposed to get done. And the whole leadership team just can bombards them with love and awesomeness. Like, thank you so much for showing up better than you needed to. That is awesome. That sets like a really, really cool kind of talent culture. Like, oh, if I work really hard and I try, the company respects that. that that's awesome. And we try to do that as much as we can. How important is it? What difference does it make to do this in person versus virtually? I'd say 50% of our employees are virtual.

Obviously, when COVID started, it was like 80%. But it's a lot more in person today. Some of the jobs that we have just happen to have great people who just don't work in New York or in any of our markets. We have great people in our finance team in Arkansas. You know, we have great people and customer service in California, like, you know, those types of roles. But my executive team might keep as close to me in New York as possible. And I'm kind of done with zooming with with higher level talent. Like if you're not willing to be next to me, then you should just go find a company to work with in your town.

When you're in person, you have become the destination. When you're not in person, everything is getting to the destination. And that makes it far less fun and far less productive, right? She's like, hey, let's talk only when we have something to talk about. I will FaceTime me when we have a meeting. Let's make sure we have an agenda. And it removes all of the moments in between, which is usually where the magic is. Because you're in an elevator or you're by the car.

And you're like, oh, dude, you know what that just reminds? And then you can have that conversation and not have to text it or, no, no, I'll tell you in our Zoom tomorrow at 9 a.m. Right? The magic's then gone. And I think you move a lot faster when you're in person, not for every role. Like we have engineers who are all over the place, and that's fine. I actually don't want them in person because they'll be too distracted. Work.

Just sit there and work. But for a lot of roles, I think people need people and people lift up people. And what's something about running a business that no one's taught you? You have to have the right lawyers. In the United States specifically, I don't think I was fully prepared that law fair is a strategy for a lot of companies. I thought, like, if I just do great work and I'm a good person, like, we'll do great business. I didn't realize I also had to be on the defense while also being on the offense. And I think that I've learned the hard way that great legal is, like, inexpensive.

Bad legal costs you a fortune. And I think that goes for our company too, like what we do, providing service. We'll tell clients all the time, like, hey, can you lower your. feet. Like, absolutely. Let me introduce you to someone who's willing to do that. Like, well, what do you mean? Don't you want the business? But yeah, but great service is expensive. If you want discount service, it'll cost you a fortune because you will sell for less or not sell at all. And then you're going to call me back and I'm going to have to lower the price because your listing will be stale and da, da, da, da, da, da, da. Like, I had not the best legal at the beginning. And then we

started expanding and people don't know what to do when they have competition. So they sue here. And because you have to defend yourself no matter what, whether you have insurance or not, you just come out of pocket, which is fine, like we do it, but I think you need to have an offensive and defensive strategy if you really want to go out there and build something big.

So for a defensive strategy, what do you recommend specifically? To have great legal and great insurance and be fully prepared for worst case scenario. Copyright infringement, the stupidest shit. especially, dude, there are, there are vulture companies out there. They're like, hey, our client actually has a patent on blue, $50,000. And or we're going to take you to court.

And it's not real, but they are incentivized to take you to court. And it'll be three years of legal things, that, the other. And so you have to negotiate. You know, negotiate down to $6,000 or something stupid. That's still $6,000, right, if someone wants to. So great legal, great insurance. insurance and not being penny wise and pound foolish. Instead of hiring the cheap person, hiring 10 of them because they're cheap, hire one or two people that are incredibly expensive

and incredibly smart. And they will get you so much further. It is the classic quality versus quantity conversation. And when you're brand new and you're an entrepreneur, you're starting your own business, a lot of these things just feel like, no, I don't need it. Or it's too expensive. Or this will never happen to me. If you build and you win, it will all happen to you. It is just what happens to successful people and successful businesses. It was crazy.

We were talking to someone about this, about a year ago, who said that they just bake that into the cost of doing business. And they just know they take 5% of what they make and they're like, that's what I spend on my legal, whether that be lawyers or lawsuits, because it just happens. Yeah.

Yep. It just happens. Except for me, people who sue me, and we've won all of them thus far, it is my moral code that I will shame you across the internet when we win, you know, and make it really, really difficult on your kids and on your families for what you've done to me mentally. And I look forward to those moments. I agree with that because there's no recourse for filing a bad lawsuit.

Of course. That's what I never understood. In the UK and other parts in Europe, it is, right? If you do that, you have to pay it. Reminds me similar, not to that extent, though, but a buddy got sued for having someone else in his channel who spoke negatively about another person. Sure.

He sued for defamation. He spent three years and 350,000 dollars, which to him, every dollar he had to his name, fighting this lawsuit, won the lawsuit. But he's out 350 grand. So he goes and files a counterclaim to get the money back. He wins that. So he spends another 50 grand, wins it.

So he's in about $400,000. Can't collect on it now. Because the guy's saying, I don't have any money. Yeah, of course. So he's out $400,000. Yeah. Just to defend himself, which doesn't make any sense to me.

That doesn't make any sense. I wouldn't go after people that don't have the money. Oh, the guy has the money. Yeah, yeah. The guy has a very wealthy guy, but it's structured in such a way where he doesn't have the money. Sure. I'm broke. Yeah.

I don't got anything. It's not my name. Yeah. Usually you can go after entities that way. I mean, the courts are pretty smart now. It's much, much harder to hide assets in different entities. like they all route up to to a base entity that way. But yeah, I would say as advice, like be protected on legal, be protected on insurance,

know what you're getting into and be prepared to go to battle. Like that's just, again, it's a part of doing business today. That's crazy. Yeah. Is there a rule about money that you wish you knew earlier? A rule about money. I mean, I'm pretty, I don't want to say tight or cheap, with money. I made a rule for us when we were building the business, because again, I was bootstrapping

for the first four years. Or I said, you know, we could grow really, really fast, but we'd have to burn cash. You know, just the classic, be unprofitable, but you're growing revenue, which is fine. But I don't ever want to be in a tough position. What if markets collapse? Who knows what's going to happen? So I made a rule early on when I say, we don't buy revenue, we don't lose revenue. We just earn it. If we haven't earned the right to have that customer, that agent, be in that market, then let's not force it. Like, let's, let's not force it. I want cac of zero as much as I possibly can. And that has proved to be a really, really strong winning strategy because now every customer we have, everyone we work with is here for the absolute right reasons because

they want to be or they're here for the opportunity that they see. And our retention is incredibly high because of it because of no one's here for the cash or because of that incentive. I didn't give them a pizza. If they signed by 9 p.m., you know, kind of. thing like you see sales people do all the time. And so that's been a firm rule with money. You know, and then I have people who help me personally and make sure I don't do anything stupid. How much money do you need to have and how much money do you need to make in order to get started at like an entry level purchase in Manhattan? An entry level purchase depends on what you want to buy. But let's say you're trying to buy

something for a million dollars, right? If you're going to pay cash, you need to have a million dollars. If you're going to get a loan, typically you'd want to put down at least 300 grand, right? If you can, right? So you're borrowing 70% of that purchase price. So that way, you don't have to pay any type of private mortgage insurance, right? You want to be able to cover the monthlies. It's the monthlies that get you. It's not the purchase. You live in the monthly payment or you invest into the monthly payment. If you're going to have rentals that cover the cost, right? That's great. If you can make a return, you know, that's great. But I think now the baseline, it's a little bit insane,

especially for two people, I think you have to be earning somewhere around $250,000 to buy a million dollar apartment in Manhattan, and if that's where you want to live. Yeah, especially considering the HOA. Yeah, the HOA, which in the university

they're called common charges, plus the real estate taxes, plus everything else, like you just said, there's always something that comes up. The refrigerator breaks, it's 10 grand for a new refrigerator, if you want a nice one. It's nuts.

Yeah, I was speaking to a friend of mine, He is renting a place in Manhattan, and he wants to buy it from the seller. Yep. And the problem is that he needs to, like, get approved not only, like, the financial getting approved from a lender, but also... He has to get approved by, like, the local board that manages, yeah, the building. I had no idea that was the thing. Oh, really? No.

Every residential building that you buy into, other than a townhouse because you're buying the house in New York City, if it's a condo, you have a condo board. And if it's a co-op, you have a co-op board. the co-op board can turn you down for anything and they don't have to tell you why. They don't like the color of your eyes. You could have $100 million in the bank. We don't want you in our building and they'll give you your money back

and the seller can no longer sell to you. That's a co-op board. A condo board can't do that. They have the right of first refusal. So if they turn down a purchaser who's verified and qualified, they don't have to sell to you, but then they do have to buy the apartment

from the owner at the same exact price, which has happened like a couple times in history, but you do have to fill out a massive condo application And oftentimes it's two years tax returns. Whoa. It's reference letters, both professional and personal, who's going to be there, they're animals or their kids. It's a lot.

Now, is that because that one person could affect negatively the value for everyone else? Like, if they're thrown parties with like 20 people on there all the time. 100%. Okay. In part two, it's also, it's another form of checks and balances. It's just remember, it's New York City. And everyone shares the same front door. You all have your own individual doors,

but you all share the same front door. And so there's background checks, there's credit checks, and it doesn't often mean that the person's not going to be able to buy it, but it does create a barrier of entry that for someone who probably shouldn't be in the building or probably shouldn't buy it,

they're not going to want to do that board package, so they just don't. In new construction where you're buying from the developer, it's the one time you can buy an apartment building where you don't have to do that application process, but you do have to have the money. The problem is that, his is a co-op and he and the seller their hopeful seller bought it during like 2020 when rates were

really low and so I told my friend I was like dude you should just try to do this sub two or you should try to do it like a seller finance and then the seller was like all down for that but then the co-op is yeah they just don't allow it yeah and you can't unfortunately what would totally change the game is if you could assign residential interest rates the same way you can in commercial in commercial you can assign the rate. And residential, you can't. So that would be, that would change the game. I always thought that you should be able to take your mortgage with you.

Yeah, you can't do that. You buy something else. No, no, they want that mortgage recording tax. Of course. Like in New York City, the mortgage recording tax is 2% of the loan. It's 2% of the loan amount. 1.925% of the loan amount. So the right to get a loan in New York City,

if you get a loan of a million dollars, right? It's 20 grand at the closing table just to, what do you mean? It's New York City. Everything's taxed. Look, it's just, and their old taxes are only going higher, man. Yeah. The mansion tax goes up to 4% in New York City now.

In L.A., it's intense, too, right? You've got that luxury tax that I think over $5 million is 6%. Yeah, man, great politics there too. Who pays the transfer tax? It depends. Typically, the standard rule of thumb is it's the seller. It's also just over 2%. So the seller would pay like 5% in commissions or whatever, 5, 6%.

pay 2% in transfer. Yes, and then potentially the mansion. No, mansion's paid by the buyer. Oh, okay. Now, those are all... But it's still taken out of the same pool of money that's being transacted. Correct. But the...

Oftentimes, sometimes, especially in tough markets, people will pay different parts of closing costs. Like, if you buy a new construction and the developer really wants to sell, they'll say, right, right, so this price, I'll pay the transfer taxes at the developer, I'll pay your mansion tax, I'll do this, I'll do that, I'll give you six months of common charges, because it's all about the net price and the buyer wants the absolute best deal possible. So sometimes, but because it's all about the net, the buyer is paying all the fees anyway. It's their money that they're giving in exchange for the apartment, right, or the home that is then being used to pay all those fees. So it's just net net. Is that cost going to come down over time, do you think, with like chat, GBT and

AI maybe taking over some of the real estate agent commission work that maybe it's whittled down from 5% down to 2. Or like you have an AI agent of some sort that like does a deal on blockchain. If you can find me a qualified person who even with efficient work will do it for 2% by all means. And they've tried it.

Every firm is coming to the United States to try to create discount brokerage. Redfin collapsed, purple bricks collapsed, left the city. So many people have tried it. And it's absolutely possible. You can do it. the service is okay. But the best people work for the biggest incentives. And if there are

marketplaces where sellers are willing to pay five or six percent or more to get the best people, that's where they're going to go. Compass was Urban Compass. They set out, they raised their first initial set of funding to break the brokerage system because they had neighborhood experts who were fee-based people, right, to create lower commission incentives on seller. It was all fee-based. It was great. I don't, I'm not going to work for an hourly wage, right? I'd rather work for free with bigger opportunity. And consumers would rather pay nothing until the end. So how often do you see it where a Zillow agent brings in a buyer to like a luxury bill? A lot. That's why Zillow makes all of their money. You know, it's an agent at any other firm, but they're part of a Zillow program that's enabling them to get lead flow, right? And so we hustle to get listings all day long. Those listings say, syndicate out to Zillow, Zill then takes those listings and sells the leads to those listings to other agents. You know what I don't like is that on Zillow.

And that's what their class action lawsuit is about right now. That's what I thought was ridiculous is that on Zillow, it's like contact this property. But then the listing agent information is buried in a sea of text. And I remember recently a buddy was looking at a place in Vegas and says, hey, could you come with me and see this house? And so we pull up to this house and this dude shows up. And I'm thinking, is this the listing agent? this is a little weird.

The guy just seemed a bit out. Nice guy. Just out of it a little bit. Anyway, he shows us through the house, and then at the very end, I say, is this the listing? And she's like, no, I just, I reached out on Zillow.

I thought he was the listing agent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He said, no, that dude was just a random guy that you reached out on Zillow. That's how they make their money. Yes. And if that deal goes through, Zillow tracks everything.

It will find you in your coffin and they'll take somewhere between 35 and 40%, which I thought was crazy. It's crazy. I just reach out to the listing agent if you're going to be reaching out like that. Yeah, but you had to know to do that. So the same way there was the commission class action lawsuit where all the big box

brokerages had to fork over and it was a multi-billion dollar settlement. At the end of the day, what it was really about was the unspoken standard where do you have to use an agent? No. But if the standard and all the training guides and the materials from all the huge firms are, make sure the seller knows that the commission should be five or six percent and that the buyers can be represented by our own agents, even if they want to come direct,

they should get three or two and a half percent. The standard was such that the consumer had to be so overly educated about the process that it typically warrants and was costing them money, right? And so the court cited in favor of the consumers, which is what they'll typically do. Same thing for Zillow. You can find the listing agent, they're there,

but it's not the standard operating procedure, right? You go on a website, you see a thing, you click on it. It says set up showing. I set up showing. I don't know that I'm going with somebody that doesn't represent the listing. That agent then goes there and they're the ones who are causing it to be a multiple fee situation. If you're just going directly to the listing agent, the listing agent you say, oh, I've got a direct deal. Oh, you want to make an offer? Great. I'll go to my seller. Let me see, oh, we have to bridge a gap. You know what? We're doing this. I'm a good person. And all of a sudden, you've got a deal done for less. So it's not necessarily

the brokerages. A lot of it is from the aggregators who make tons and tons of money. on listing commissions too. Yeah. That's what Jack did. Can I say that? Yeah. On your where... When Jack sent me this warehouse, I said the first thing, if you're serious about it,

go to the listing agent. No, you didn't say that. Oh, hot dog! Why did I say that? Because that's what I did for the past house that I bought. Because I told you to do that. Yeah, you told me to do it five years ago. And then I, like, have since been doing that when I find the property I'm interested.

I reach out to the, yeah, the listing agent. Are you a serial, are you a serial flipper? What's going on over here? No, I'm not a serial. Whoa, whoa, whoa, I'm not a serial flipper. Okay. He's a serial buyer. Oh, I gotcha.

Yeah, I'm a serial entrepreneur, okay? I look for deals and I try to get a good deal. But got a great deal because you went to the listing agent. Now, I'm not saying in every situation you should always go to the listing agent, but when you're an experienced buyer and you know what you want. Yeah, you can negotiate by yourself. That's fine. And it was interesting.

I mean, her commission on my side was going to be like tens of thousands of dollars. Yeah. And let's just say more than 20,000. Yeah. And then I asked her, I was like, you know what? Like, the best I can do is like 7,500, if you're willing to do it. It's just some paperwork. And she was like, yeah, I think I could do that. And then two days passed, then she contacts me again. She's like, hey, sorry, the brokerage. Like, they won't let me do it for this. Um, I have to do it for $35,000. And I was like, oh my gosh, 35. I'm like, okay, well, I'm just going to hit up this other agent that I just had this agent's contact in my phone. Like, hey, can you just transact this property for me for $7,500? She said, yes. I went back to the other agent. I'm like, I found someone else to do it for $75, She's like, okay, I can do it for $7,500. And so it's like, for me in that experience. It's all a negotiation, but you know what you're doing. It's all a negotiation for sure.

But like something as simple as if you tax back and forth saved me, like $20,000 on that. Good move. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Have you seen that lawsuit affect commissions? It hasn't. I don't see any change. No, because there's no inventory.

If there was a lot of inventory, it's kind of like we're going back to, I don't know, an hour ago talking about the city, right? New York City, politics. Like, there's only so much you can do. do. If there's no inventory, and if you have high rates, you have far less people who can afford to buy, and you have far less things for them to buy. And so when you have a tough inventory market and a tough buyer's market, because the monthly payments are just high, you need to incentivize people to get deals done. And so the standard hasn't really changed. What has changed

now is additional paperwork, and everyone's very clear and above board, which actually, I am for free market transparency. I was kind of okay with what went down, because it stops some. of the shenanigans that you're just talking about, right? If you earn 6% by all means, earn it. If you can find a great living in a way to do that, but you have to be black and white and you have to be above board. So now there's, there's buy side agreements in a way that most markets just haven't had before. And you go through and you write down, hey, I'm going to show you these 10 properties. These eight, the sellers are paying my fee. You're good. These two, the sellers aren't. So if you like them, the fee's 3%. And then the buyer gets to say, no,

don't show me those. I'll go by myself. Or the buyer gets to say, I understand. Okay, let's go see them. And now everything's above board and totally, totally transparent. That way there's no sneakiness.

There's no weirdness the way it used to be. What would you say are the strongest reasons to live in New York City and against living in New York City? Well, you seem like you don't want to live in New York City. Are you kidding me? I tell Graham all the time, it's like, if I could live anywhere in America or anywhere, honestly, in the world, it would be New York City right now.

New York is the most. intellectually curious city on the planet. You could walk outside and see someone you've never met a hundred times a day, every day for a hundred years. You can't do that anywhere else. There is every industry. There's art, tech, finance, sport, right? Pick an industry. It has a headquarters in New York City. You have the poorest of the poor, the wealthiest of the wealthy, and everyone in between. You have great education, great art, great food, great food, great fun, great sadness, and everything is on a rock. It's also full of vertical neighborhoods, which just make it also, in a weird way, incredibly environmentally conscious. Versus, like where we

are today, everyone has 8,000 square foot house, I want acreage, I want this, I need my yard, we're in the desert, but whatever, I want grass. Like, everyone wants to have their stuff in New York. It's like, no, you want a three bedroom that looks at the park? You've got to, to be so successful that you can pay me $10 million a bedroom. If you can't do that, you don't get one. And so it really, really, really kind of democratizes the world in a very, very tight and efficient place. And it's also one of the most productive markets that I know of next to, you know, like a Hong Kong, let's say, where people just work their ass off to build because there is just so much opportunity. And you don't need to have a car.

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Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa, whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk. Haboniero? More like habanier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon. What I love about New York is that you can go into a bar in New York, like an East Village or something. Yeah. And strike up a conversation with anyone and they can be a fascinating person. Up to something that's super unique, something you can learn a ton about.

Whereas if I go out here in Las Vegas and I'm down on Fremont Street or I'm like at a parkway tavern somewhere and I talk to someone, it's like, they're not up to much. Most of the time. Especially at Fremont Street, too. I'm just, especially on Fremont Street, but like, of course I like talking to these people in just a way of like, oh, cool, yeah, this is awesome. But like, there's no substance to the conversation, whereas you can strike up a conversation with literally anybody on the street in New York, which is so fun. Yeah, yeah. And they'll tell you something interesting. Just think about higher education, though, right?

There's a, there's, there's, there's gated entry. We're talking about like New York City. New York City is so expensive. It, there's, there's an exclusivity and there's gated entry to it because most people just can't afford to live there, which means the people that have. have figured out how to live there for better and for worse, fucking interesting. And they do something that has created the wherewithal, whether someone else is paying for it or they're paying for it or they stole it that makes them worthwhile of a conversation at a bar. Other cities have a far lower barrier of entry. And so you're talking to people that didn't need to go through 70,000 hoops just to get into the bar.

So, you know, it's kind of the same thing. What's for you been one of the most unexpected benefits of the Netflix show? Oh, I mean, Netflix changed my life. Million Dollar List in New York changed my life in 2012. Overnight, that show was syndicated around the world. I did not know that. That wasn't like something they told me, nor did I ever expect it. And it enabled me to open doors because then I could call people and say,

hey, my name's Ryan Sirhan. I'm a realtor. I also have this TV show. Have you ever heard, oh, oh, you'll meet with me? Okay, great. Then I had to go and do my job. Yeah. I mean, in one night on June 28th in 2024,

owning Manhattan comes out, and they put it in front of just under 300 million people and gave them the option to watch it. And a lot of them watched it and was just insane. Everything we had broke. Like, I've never, ever experienced anything like it because everything we do on social is lean back content. You're watching a podcast, I'm leaning back, right?

I'm watching it, cool, cool, cool. And it fills up this much of your brain. Netflix long form character-driven dramas, right? Which is really what we do. It's an occupational docu-series is lean-in TV. To really, to enjoy it, if you watch it in the background, that's fine. There's a lot of stuff like that. But you, it's a deal show, so you really lean in, which means it fills up this much of your brain, which means you get that more engaged.

And so the inbounds we had, I mean, changed everything for us. We were just a different company now because of it. And season two comes out December 5th. and will just be insane. The level of inbound lead flow is just crazy. Do you know how many views your first season got? Do they tell you any of the metrics? Or do they just come back and they say,

we're going to renew again because it was good? More of the latter than anything. Okay. They said we're going to renew. They renewed it in like 28 days. Wow. Which was pretty quick to season two. It's also owning Manhattan's also now like,

isn't selling sunset is like housewives for real estate, right? There's a lot, you know, HGTV is slowly dying. I don't know of any other real estate TV show, really. Ricio Umanski had a, he had a Netflix show, right? Yeah, canceled. So our show, one, it's the only one in New York City. There's no others. And two, it's the only deal show that's out there for real estate that anybody watches anyway.

I just don't know of any others. I could be wrong. And so it has a very, very, very, very captive audience. And it's just wild. I don't know. Like in the first 15 days, I said a billion minutes had been watched. That's one thing they told us. I don't really know what that means.

I could do the math. But like, is that episode one? Is that I really don't know. The thing with Netflix that I didn't realize that I heard from selling sunset is that when you get a view, it's usually just not one person. It's you're watching with one person watching with like three other. So you kind of multiply that and you get a much higher number. So if you get a billion minutes,

it's really probably three to four billion minutes because you're getting people watching with, you know, wife or a husband or a kid or someone else. Yeah. I mean, people watch solo on their phones. So when you get views and it's on the phone, oftentimes it's someone watching on their phone in the bathroom, with bed, whatever, you know.

I'm going to call it here first, but I have a feeling you're probably going to do a spinoff with a different office in the next, like, two seasons. That's my prediction. This season of season two, one episode is in Miami because we opened up the Florida office. We're selling the Mercedes-Benz places in Miami. And so Mercedes-Benz, executives flew in from Stuttgart, and we did the whole thing down there. Well, you'll do it. Owning Miami. Owning Vegas. Maybe. I don't, you know, it would have to be incredibly worth it. Making a TV show is a ton of work. It takes so much time. It's been a year and a half since season one,

And I've been working on season two ever since. So it's just, and it comes out all in one day, and it's gone. So it is a lot of work. It's a lot of time. But I love it, though. And I think I just really, really enjoy making it. I enjoy being an executive producer. I enjoy finding those cool moments and working on the music and the edits and stuff.

What's the biggest misconception people have about you from the show? That I'm a psycho, crazy boss. I don't know. I think I'm relatively normal. For me, I would say it's probably your work ethic, is that I, I, see your schedule of like four o'clock in the morning going to the gym working until like 11 p.m. midnight doing emails and like how do you how does he do it yeah and how is that all real are you really going from like 4 a.m. to midnight yeah yeah do you sleep when you say terrible you you choose to do that

every day i think so i think i choose to do it but i also i don't think i choose to do it i think um I think there is a problem that I have, and maybe it's just the way I was raised or the way that I've grown up in the industry where I was like, if I, the least I can do is do the most. Like if all else fails, at least I did everything I could with the productive hours that I have on the planet. And I don't think that's necessarily the healthiest way to operate. It's how I operate and it's hard for me to change. But if I'm being totally, totally honest, I am very envious of people who have relatively empty calendars, who are just builders and makers, you know? I feel like I am so, so scheduled and so busy at all times. You know, I don't want to, I don't want to die and be like, at least I had a full calendar is completely meaningless. So you do have a slight desire to change it.

I would love to if I could figure out a way to do it. Have you ever spoke to like a professional about, like a therapist? Sure. I have spoken to a therapist. I have unproductive use of my time, though. Like, I just... You could do it on a treadmill, though. Yeah.

So at least you're getting a work out. No, I like listening to music when I work out. I don't want to listen to someone be like, so tell me about your mom. And I'm like, no, fuck you, man. My mom's fine. Yeah, I would love to be in that position. I think, going back to one of the mistakes

that I made, I told you about hiring people, not having the right people in leadership early on that are too dependent upon me where every decision has to be, Ryan, everything is me, me, me, me, me. As much as I felt like I needed to have that type of control, I think our company's at the point now where it's probably better if I don't

to enable me to have more space to think and to brainstorm and to do what's biggest for the business during the day, not just what's the neediest thing for the business during the day. And I hope to get there. Maybe the next time I come back here, I'm like, dude, I'm so, I'm chill.

All right. Well, last question I have for you, has your skincare routine changed? Has my skincare? Finally, a hard-hitting question. No, I haven't changed my skincare routine in like 15 years. And what's the skincare routine? Well, since you ask, at night I use an Erno Laslo mud soap to wash my face.

During the day, I like a harsh chemical nutrigena deep clean. I use one of those ultrasonic brushes, right, for exfoliation. I use a zinc, tinted zinc sunscreen every single day with SPF 20 in it every day for like 20 years probably. And then every December I do- Where do you put the sunscreen? On my face. On your beard and everything too? No, no, not my beard. I don't think so.

Just nose. Yeah, nose everywhere. And it has zinc in it so it helps keep my face cool. And every December I do a V-beam laser treatment, which shrinks blood vessels. in the face. And I had really, really bad acne for like 10 years. And so I had like four doses of acutane when I was younger. And I think it just ruined so much of my self-confidence, especially because I wanted to be an actor and all that stuff that like once I finally got that under control, it has just become like a part of my process. And you met Jeff Allen, by the way, your look-alike.

Yeah, yeah. We both are gray and white. Yes. Yeah. Every white guy with gray hair, like, you and yo i what's up what's up you know do you guys give each other looks when you see each no but he did i was like what do you put in your hair and he gave me this like crazy product said what do you put in your hair i'm like i'm in horse conditioner um because gray hair is hard because it's just super it's a lot of very thin hair it's really really annoying but yeah he was he was amazing he was awesome his story is super super cool it was fun well thank you so much for coming on really appreciate it and uh speaking of zinc uh there's a member of the index which down below in the description if you want to apply,

who also sells a zinc sunscreen. So I'll see if you could send you some. Nice. Please do. Thanks, guys. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thank you guys for watching so much. And make sure to check out December 5th, owning Manhattan. Netflix.

Season 2. Thanks. Until next time.