Serhant’s Ravi Kantha is bringing in some newly minted starpower to his team.
Jessica Taylor, one of the agents featured on the firm’s new Netflix series “Owning Manhattan,” is joining the top townhouse broker as the ninth member of his cohort.
“If there’s anyone that’s going to take the exposure from a reality show and leverage it into something very positive for her business, I think it’s her,” Kantha said.
Formerly a recruiter for UBS’ human resources, Taylor largely managed to rise above the Netflix series’ central dramas, including a feud between ex-best friends Chloe Caine and Jade Shenker and fallout from a controversial podcast recorded by Jessica Markowski and Jonathan Nørmølle.
Instead, Taylor’s debut on the little screen shows her organizing a peace-making meal and talking her buyers into doubling their budget to purchase a $22 million condo at 25 North Moore Street in Tribeca.
“When you watch the show, Jessica comes across as somebody who’s very focused on business,” Kantha said, adding that he views her presence on the show as an added value. “She’s serious. She has goals, and she wants to hit them.”
Kantha said he also tapped Taylor in part for her experience selling new developments, a segment of the market Kantha set his sights on when he joined Serhant but hasn’t yet tackled. Taylor’s sponsor sale track record includes stints at Quay Tower in Brooklyn Bridge Park and Brooklyn Point in Downtown Brooklyn.
“I’ve been in construction sites since the very beginning,” said Taylor, who joined Serhant in 2021 after more than four years with Corcoran.
The Kantha Team isn’t Taylor’s first time partnering up with other agents. Before joining Corcoran, she worked with Douglas Elliman’s top-producing Eklund-Gomes Team.
Taylor said she wasn’t looking to join another team when Kantha approached her more than a month ago, but ultimately the team’s support and infrastructure was too hard to pass up.
“Rather than me just being another name…I wanted to find a team where [the lead] is really interested in progressing everyone in their own careers and letting them work in the space they’re most interested in,” she said.
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Taylor’s listings on Serhant’s website include a $5 million apartment at Essex House, a hotel condo project at 160 Central Park South, and three units for rent, including one at 50 Bridge Park Drive asking $11,500 per month.
Taylor is joining the team about seven months after Ravi Kantha left the top-producing team he co-founded with Matthew Lesser at Leslie J. Garfield, a boutique firm specializing in townhouse sales. Before his departure, Kantha made a name for himself selling brownstones in Brooklyn and lower Manhattan.
Since Kantha launched his then five-person Serhant team, he’s notched close to $48 million in closed sales and another $50 million in contract. His listings, which total more than $210 million in volume, include a $14 million in Brooklyn Heights and an $11 million abode in Greenwich Village.