Ryan Serhant Discusses ‘Hidden Fees’ in Real Estate—and Reveals His Solution To Streamline the Business

Real estate mogul and reality TV star Ryan Serhant has opened up about the snarl of hidden fees in the process of buying or selling a home, which many customers might not even be aware of—and what he is doing to streamline the business.

Speaking on Thursday at Inman Connect, a conference for real estate agents and professionals held in New York City, Serhant laid bare some of the invisible financial burdens associated with working in real estate, including “what agents are paying for between their commission split, fee structure, transaction fees, desk fees, and all the hidden costs we work with,” he said.

What ultimately ends up happening with all of these costs? They are passed on to the consumer in the form of “transaction fees.”

Alternatively known as “broker service fees” or “administrative fees,” these charges cover the cost of anything from document storage to management and are tacked on to each homebuying transaction.

Although not as hefty as a broker’s commission, transaction fees could still set a consumer back hundreds of dollars, depending on where they live. 

Serhant, the star of Netflix’s “Owning Manhattan,” said that this tangle of opaque business expenditures played a role in his decision to launch his eponymous brokerage firm, Serhant, in 2020, rather than join one of the many established companies.

“There are a lot of hidden fees in this business that I also really, really didn’t like when I was meeting with different brokerages in 2017 to 2020,” said Serhant. “And again, that pushed me to try to create something simple, and I think that simplification is sophistication.”

In his talk with Inman moderator and special projects editor Jim Dalrymple II, Serhant, 40, outlined his vision of a future where real estate agents go “screenless” and can focus on their core competencies, while keeping the costs of doing business down.

Serhant first introduced the idea of doing away with administrative work for salespeople a year ago.

“I realized as an agent, I spend about 80% of my day doing task work, administrative work,” he said. “Even if I had an assistant and they were doing a lot of that … about 20% to 25% of my day was selling, meeting people, doing things that only I can do.”

In seeking to “fix” his time management problem, Serhant was inspired to develop S.MPLE—his firm’s proprietary broker-focused AI platform designed to simplify workflow.

“It replaces all administrative work,” Serhant recently told Realtor.com® in an exclusive interview. “Whether it’s email, calendar, comp analysis, showings setup for agents, running neighborhood analytics for new buyers, putting together listing presentations, exclusive listing agreements on the sale side, anything you can think of.”

Last month, S.MPLE, which has been in development for four years under the umbrella of Serhant Technologies, attracted a $45 million infusion from venture capital firms Camber Creek and Left Lane Capital.  

“For the agents that use it … it’s completely changed the behavior of what it means to buy and sell homes,” Serhant told the audience at the Inman conference.

The superstar broker predicted that within a couple of years, S.MPLE will replace at least a portion of the support staff at Serhant and untether agents from their laptops and screens.

“Just like Instacart, you don’t have to go to the grocery store anymore; it gets delivered to you,” the CEO said, “and that’s what we’re trying to do to make our agents’ lives just better.”