Over the past 11 years, no one has sold more townhouses—or more gross dollars of real estate—in Brooklyn Heights than Ravi Kantha.
In a new video series following a day in the life of luxury real estate agents, Kantha is the latest to open his doors, offering an unfiltered look at a schedule that starts before dawn and doesn’t let up until his kids are asleep.
Kantha specializes in luxury real estate sales in Manhattan and Brooklyn, selling over $2 billion of real estate since starting his career in 2015.
“For me, this is all about process,” says Kantha, founder and principal of The Kantha Team at SERHANT.
“We want to be the best at what we do. We want to serve our clients better than anyone else. And if we do that, the money and everything else is a byproduct of it.”
That process starts at 4.15am, when Kantha wakes to lift weights and get on the treadmill before the “tornado” of getting his kids ready hits the house. From there, it’s a chauffeured commute into Manhattan from Manhasset, Long Island—a habit he adopted only after racking up a $40,000 Uber bill in a single year.
“The amount of time I get to work in the car that I did not get to work when I was either in and out of Ubers or on the subway makes a major difference,” he says. “It turns out it was one of the best decisions professionally that I’ve ever made.”
Kantha, who has a team of roughly 15 agents, spent five years as a lawyer—first as a Bronx prosecutor, then in white-collar criminal defense—before a mounting stack of student loans and a few episodes of “Million Dollar Listing” convinced him to make the leap. He got his license six weeks later.
His day now moves between a mint-condition Brooklyn Heights townhouse shoot, a marketing pitch on a renovated West Village property, and floor plans for a new development condo project taking shape in the neighborhood where his career began. He’s also laying the groundwork for the team’s first expansion outside New York, with a luxury project underway in Miami’s Brickell neighborhood.
Between meetings, Kantha swings by a watch specialist on 47th Street—he collects high-end pieces, including an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak and a Vacheron Constantin, calling it the one hobby that rivals real estate and family for his attention.
He credits much of the team’s growth to hiring people who complement his own skill set, including business partner and executive director Giana, who runs day-to-day operations while he focuses on sales and client relationships.
“You’ve got to find people who are excellent at the things that maybe you’re not that great at, and you have to hand off responsibility and trust them,” Kantha says. “That’s what’s allowed us to grow together.”
The day ends, fittingly, with dinner alongside SERHANT. CEO Ryan Serhant and the rest of the team—a reward, Kantha notes, for finishing as the brokerage’s top-producing team.
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Fia Ramo is a video editor at Realtor.com. She has produced, written, and edited award-winning content for NBC, PBS, A+E Networks, Publicis Sapient, and Bustle Digital Group. Her work has been recognized by Digiday and Cannes Lions. When she’s not editing, she’s likely deep in TV analysis or searching for the best fried chicken in New York City.
