Agents Using SERHANT.'s AI Tool Grew Production 44% in One Year

Agents who used SERHANT.'s in-house AI product S.mple grew their production by 44% on average in one year, founder and CEO Ryan Serhant said at the National Association of Realtors' 2026 NXT conference. The firm's heaviest users — what Serhant called "super agents" — doubled production in the first year, and they did it in a declining market.

The six-year-old brokerage, which is RealTrends Verified, is expanding nationally on a model built around AI, lead generation and lean operations. Serhant's core diagnosis of the industry's biggest players was blunt: they're defending the wrong things.

"The thing that scared me the most was they were very, very focused on protecting the business that they had instead of building for where they're going," Serhant said.

What should a brokerage actually do for agents?

Serhant wants brokers to flip the recruiting script. Instead of asking what agents contribute to the brokerage, brokers should ask what the brokerage delivers to its agents.

For SERHANT., that means three things:

• Lead generation
• Brand awareness
• An operating structure that stays efficient as the business scales

"My number one job is to generate leads," Serhant said. He compared the brokerage to infrastructure: "SERHANT. is a power plant, and we provide electricity to our agents and to our leaders in every market that we're in."

That value proposition has to help agents reach higher price points, increase transaction volume and win customers. "Agents want leads more than they care about split," he said, referring to commission splits between agent and brokerage.

Takeaway: if you're an agent, the lead flow matters more than the percentage on your commission check.

Is AI spending actually paying off?

Serhant doubts most brokerage AI investments will generate meaningful returns. "A tool is only as good as the person who will use it," he said.

So SERHANT. took a different route. It deployed S.mple to support staff first, automating tasks and freeing agents to sell. The goal wasn't time savings. It was more transactions per agent and better operating margins (what remains of revenue after costs).

The next step, he said, is AI handling increasingly complex workflows with less human intervention. His test for any AI investment: is the tool increasing production, or just adding another expense line?

Does cheap AI make agents obsolete?

No, in Serhant's view. "If intelligence is cheap, trust is expensive. Trust is now a luxury item."

His strategy is to strip administrative work off agents' plates so they can build customer relationships technology can't replicate. "How can the agents develop more trust with more customers by buying back their time?"

For agents, the market logic is straightforward: automation handles the routine work, and the premium shifts to human trust.

Do brokerages still need offices?

SERHANT. built its business without physical offices, putting the money into leads and technology instead. As it expanded, it set rules for when an office makes financial sense — including reaching $1 billion in annual transactions.

"Anyone who says they need an office is clinging to a business that used to be, and I don't want to work with them," Serhant said.

His stated priority: "create the leanest, meanest efficiency model, so that the support, the expense, doesn't outrun revenue in any market we happen to find ourselves in."

Can you recruit agents without paying them?

Serhant says yes. The firm recruits founding agents in new markets without financial incentives. "We don't pay anybody. They all come to us organically. Every agent who's come to us leaves money on the table because they come for the opportunity and they stay for the results."

His warning on money-led recruiting: "If they come for the money, they stay for the money. Just like a bad marriage, right?"

What defines brokerage culture?

"I define culture as the behavior you allow," Serhant said. "It's not policy guidelines. It's not the employee handbook."

He admitted he made early mistakes keeping high producers whose behavior hurt the organization. "It is always so much better to chop out the poison and let the rest rise to the top," he said.

How should small brokerages respond to a shifting market?

Asked how firms with fewer than 25 agents should handle a changing housing market, Serhant advised abandoning strategies that worked under different conditions. "Sometimes there are markets that reward us. Sometimes there are markets that punish us."

He pointed to multifamily, leasing and commercial real estate as segments brokers can move into when traditional transaction sources dry up. "We get frustrated because we get stuck trying to do things that used to work instead of being a little uncomfortable and pushing forward to do the things that could work."

His closing message to brokerage leaders: surviving a tough market may require more than waiting for sales to rebound — it may mean rethinking how firms generate business, support agents and define success.