Million Dollar Listing New York star and luxury agent Ryan Serhant has announced the launch of his virtual world, which is to be named UNIVERS.
In a series of Instagram posts Mr Serhant, who has the most followed brand in real estate, said the virtual world would provide an array of services for his agents and their teams.
“Using the best technology we have available, our agents will be able to attend meetings, grow their teams, meet with our employees, interact with clients, perform workflows, and eventually show properties in our UNIVERS,” he wrote on Instagram.
“Our 11,000-plus @sellitlikeserhant course members will be able to learn, meet with their coaches and brand strategists, and interact with one another for referrals.
“Studios and ID Lab will be able to show off new content and marketing materials in our own auditorium.”
Mr Serhant said he’d been waiting to announce the launch of UNIVERS. for a long time.
“When we decided to start our own real estate firm a few years ago, we knew two things: One, that we wanted to create the first of its kind content-to-commerce brokerage focused on our agents’ brands and the properties they sell, to provide best-in-class and future-forward service to our clients worldwide,” he said.
“And two, that we wanted to serve the whole world with a mobile-first approach, and grow with the most efficient footprint.”
UNIVERS. Will be modeled on Mr Serhant’s real life office building in New York, but he said he would still have and open more physical offices in certain markets.
Mr Serhant told Inman in a statement that the virtual world would help better serve agents and clients today, in 2035 and beyond.
“Today’s teenagers are tomorrow’s workforce, buyers and sellers and we are building a real estate company that will support them in the way they prefer to work and communicate,” he said.
But he stressed that he was not trying to establish UNIVERS. As a virtual brokerage in the same vein as eXp Realty but just open new possibilities for agents, employees and, eventually, clients.
The news of Mr Serhant’s virtual world closely follows his annual letter to clients where he said cryptocurrency would become the norm in real estate.
“Many of our buyers in 2021 have either used those profits to make home purchases or actually transacted in crypto, wallet-to-wallet,” he said.
“I see a world very soon in which 50 per cent of all real estate transactions are done with crypto, and where contracts are recorded on the blockchain and ‘signed’ as NFTs (non-fungible tokens).”
UNIVERS. Is still under development and is expected to launch by the end of 2022.
