Luxury brokerage SERHANT. is launching operations across California on Tuesday, opening simultaneously in five markets across the state, the firm has informed Inman.
The expansion — spanning Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Malibu, Orange County, San Diego, San Francisco, Palo Alto, Marin County and Tahoe — marks the company’s first West Coast foothold. The move west also creates a national footprint, which the firm has been building toward since its founding in 2020.
SERHANT. will launch with 65 agents across the five territories, including 16 founding agents who have collectively closed more than $2 billion in sales volume over the past 12 months.
“We were always going to go to California, it’s just a matter of when we earned the right to do it,” CEO and founder Ryan Serhant told Inman. “I know this company is national and my goal is to make it not the biggest but the best real estate firm for buyers, sellers and agents on planet earth.”
Ryan Serhant | SERHANT. Studios
Earning the right
The California launch is the latest in a rapid national expansion that has taken SERHANT. from a New York-based startup to a firm operating in 16 states with more than 2,000 agents. Since 2020, the company has expanded across New England, the Mid-Atlantic, Florida, Arizona and Nevada. The firm reported $7.1 billion in sales volume in 2025, with growth exceeding 100 percent year over year.
Serhant said California’s current market dynamics made the timing right, pointing to what he described as growing negotiability in the high-end segment.
“I think buyers have gained really significant leverage through high-end trophy assets, which continue to command premium prices but are finding more and more negotiability,” he said. “I think that ultra-luxury segment continues to remain active.”
He also pushed back on the narrative that wealthy Californians are fleeing the state, framing the migration conversation as an opportunity rather than a headwind.
“There’s a lot of talk about high-net-worth individuals leaving California, which is why I think this is such a great opportunity,” Serhant said. “I don’t think people are necessarily leaving LA. I think they’re adding residences elsewhere. They’re creating portfolios.”
That shift in how affluent clients approach real estate, he said, is reshaping what agents need to be.
“It used to be that a real estate agent was a real estate agent,” Serhant said. “Today, especially in luxury, you’re a real estate strategist. Agents sit with clients and think about portfolio, think about assemblage, think about their lifestyle over the next 10 years.”
A different model
California’s luxury market is home to some of the most recognizable names in the industry, including Jason Oppenheim, Mauricio Umansky and Gary Gold. Serhant said he is not framing the expansion as a head-to-head competition with those brands.
“I’m not looking to necessarily compete with another agency,” he said. “I am an agent. I built this company with our agents, for our agents and the DNA is by our agents.”
He said SERHANT.’s core differentiator is its technology infrastructure, describing the brokerage as “the only AI-native real estate firm in the United States.” The company’s proprietary platform, S.MPLE, automates administrative tasks for agents and, according to Serhant, drives measurable results.
“The average agent who uses S.MPLE grows their GCI by 144 percent in the first 12 months with nothing else changing,” he said.
The firm also operates SERHANT. Studios, an in-house production company that executive produces original content, including its Netflix series Owning Manhattan, as well as top-of-funnel content the firm says drives lead flow to agents.
“We are able to put our properties in front of more qualified eyeballs than anyone else on the planet that you would ever want to list with because our distribution funnel is the largest of any brokerage,” Serhant said.
The 16 founding agents joining Tuesday were not recruited with financial incentives, Serhant said, describing the firm’s approach to growth as organic.
“I will only work with people at this company who I’ve earned the right to work with, meaning we don’t buy them,” he said. “If you come for the opportunity, you stay for the result. And there is no other company that makes that guarantee.”
2 camps
Beyond California, Serhant expanded on comments he made at Inman Connect earlier this year, where he predicted the industry would eventually consolidate around two players.
He framed the coming shakeout not as a competition between specific firms but as a philosophical divide.
“The industry is consolidating and dividing right now into two camps,” he said. “One camp is empowering the property because the property is the market. The property provides the transaction. And if you empower the property, you value the people, but the people become the byproduct of the property. And then there’s us. And I’m here solely to empower the people.”
Serhant said SERHANT. has no plans to grow through acquisition.
“We’re growing organically, albeit at a breakneck speed,” he said. “I think independents have an awesome opportunity to hopefully be stronger than ever and remain independent.”
He added that the firm’s retention rate — which he cited at roughly 99 percent — reflects the results agents experience rather than financial incentives keeping them in place.
The California expansion, Serhant said, is not a ceiling.
“I will stop at nothing until I do that,” he said of his goal to build the best real estate firm on the planet. “California and the United States is a big piece of that puzzle.”
Correction: SERHANT. is entering five markets. Inman initially reported some of the company’s submarkets as standalone markets.
