It took three and a half years of phone calls, texts, and lunch invitations for Ryan Serhant to get Peter Zaitsev into the meeting. Zaitsev eventually agreed to meet, but made it clear that he was satisfied with Corcoran and had no intention of taking action.
Six months later, Owning Manhattan viewers see Serhant’s persistence pay off. At a meeting at 200 Amsterdam, Serhant, with “hundreds of millions of dollars of inventory to sell in one building,” offered Zaitsev the post of sales director for the entire building, and the deal was signed.
“He convinced me that the opportunity I would have at SERHANT was a better opportunity than what I have now, after a lot of hard work, and he did a really, really, really great job,” Zaitsev said.
It’s not hard to see why Ryan Serhant, with more than $4.8 billion in sales and more than 500 trades, wanted to add Zaitsev to his team at the then-four-year-old brokerage firm. But how did Zaitsev build such a high-profile career?
humble beginnings
“All my life, I always wanted to be an investment banker. The first woman I dated, her father was a big investment banker, and I looked at him and thought, ‘That guy is very successful. I want to be like him,'” Zaitsev said.
Despite his poor grades, he graduated from college and got a job at Merrill Lynch’s private wealth division. But at the time, his mother and brother had just started a restaurant called Zaitsev Burgers, which eventually expanded to several locations in New York City before closing in 2018. Out of “obligation,” Zaitsev put off a career in finance and worked in a family restaurant for about five years until he got married.
At the time, he lived within walking distance of Bond Street. Through a friend, he met Dennis Mangone, a successful housing broker who lived at 40 Bond, Ian Trager’s green building.
“I thought, ‘That person is great. That person is successful. I want to be like that person,'” Zaitsev said. “So I basically followed Dennis. [Mangone] … Six months later I thought, “Dennis, it’s summer.” I’m 28 years old. Work for free as an unpaid intern. ” So I finally convinced him to give me an internship. ”
stepped in the door
He finally got the three-month internship he had been persistently pursuing.
“During that time, I learned a lot about business. [was] It’s like a rainmaker in new developments…he collaborated with Ian Trager. I knew him from Studio 54. He worked with Steve Witkoff and ultimately basically shaped my career. There were a lot of other, you know, really great people,” Zaitsev said.
At the end of the internship, Zaitsev drove Mangone’s car to Florida. On the way, Mangone, whom Zaitsev describes as a “personable person,” knocked the phone out of his hand and said, “I won’t hire you. You don’t have the attention span. Please talk to Susan de França.” At the time, she was director of new development at Douglas Elliman.
chance knock
She knew Zaitsev well enough to hire him for $50,000 a year, promising great new developments. From there, he joined 150 Charles, the building where he built his career.
“150 Charles was probably the fastest sell-out in New York City history, three months. At the time, it sold for $3,300 per square foot, which was a West Village record,” Zaitsev said.
how? He memorized the delivery plan, the bible of what developers must deliver to customers, from start to finish. This is a complex building with 91 units and 80 floor plans, so the floor plan and views are also important.
“Leonard Steinberg, Rafael De Niro, Darren Sukenik and Madeline Hult-Elganayan were the salespeople for it. So I basically got an Ivy League MBA in three months. They took me to screenings because I knew everything,” he said. “And I was meeting the Jon Bon Jovises of the world. The Ben Stillers of the world. The leaders of the industry that we were selling at the time, and not only that, but they, four brokers of their generation, who I think are probably the best brokers of their generation.”
All four brought distinctly different expertise to the table. He describes Madeline Hult Elghanayan as very “uptown,” Rafael De Niro as “numbers-oriented,” Leonard Steinberg as “sophisticated,” and Darren Sukenik as “an old-school pit-bull type Long Island broker.”
career maker
Then Steve Witkoff, now an aide to President Trump and special envoy for peace envoys, noticed Zaitsev and placed him at 10 West Madison Square. and 111 Murray. And a building in LA.
After commuting to LA for a year, Zaitzeff decided it was too much and moved to Corcoran.
“I entered the luxury market from day one because I was at 150 Charles and I was surrounded by these kinds of rainmakers… Yes, I worked really hard, but I was also lucky,” he said.
Lessons for agents
Please be persistent.
“It took me six months to get my foot in the door,” he said. “So if it takes six months to get your foot in the door, how long does it take to step into a life of luxury?”
The biggest lesson is to know more than others and become a better person.
“I was lucky enough to be a part of this project, but I knew a lot about it to put myself in a really lucky position to be able to go to screenings, because as an assistant…I almost never go to screenings with the sales broker. The only reason I was there was because I knew more than them. And they knew that. So they were like, “We need him here because he knows everything.” That’s only because I memorized the delivery plan. ”
“I say this to everyone who works for me now. I’ve been doing this job for about 15 years: ‘In order for you to be good, you have to know more and be better than me, right? You have to know more and be better than me, because then you can add value.'”
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