There’s a notion that to change into a prime agent in L.A.’s ultra-competitive actual property market, one wants to have private connections. Referrals and networking are the muse of success. Or, as one wag not too long ago put it, “You want to know wealthy individuals.”
But one agent, Tony Mariotti of Ruby Home, breaks that mould. Last yr, he repped the consumers of a $17.5 million Malibu seashore home owned by Skrillex and represented Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Joe Elliott of Def Leppard in his buy of a $2.3 million pied-a-terre in West Hollywood, as reported by Dirt.
Mariotti’s shoppers on these gross sales weren’t linked to him by referral or phrase of mouth. They merely discovered him by way of his Ruby Home web site, which Mariotti has shrewdly optimized to rank on web page one in all Google Search for a number of phrases. Type in “luxurious houses Los Angeles” and Ruby Home comes up because the fifth end result. Type “Bird Streets houses” or “Los Angeles penthouses” or “Trousdale Estates,” and Mariotti’s website ranks No. 1., forward of Zillow. In whole, Mariotti did $33 million in gross sales in Southern California in 2021, up from $5 million the yr earlier than.
Tony Mariotti, founding father of Ruby Home.
Lauren Pressey
Mariotti leaned into his digital publishing background to nab these high-ranking outcomes, which in flip generate buyer leads and in the end gross sales. “I’m acquainted with what digital publishers attempt to do to get eyeballs and advert impressions,” says the agent. “I type of took the publishing mentality into constructing Ruby Home.”
To that finish, he began publishing weblog posts in regards to the structure and character of assorted neighborhoods round Los Angeles on Ruby Home’s web site, alongside actual property listings. “I used to be considering if I can write about issues that I like like structure neighborhoods and trade — all three are inextricably certain particularly in L.A. — perhaps individuals will present up and examine [for example] Carroll Avenue’s Victorian homes,” he says. “I type of constructed evergreen content material about neighborhoods. I’m making an attempt to outrank Zillow, Trulia and Redfin, which simply provide houses on the market.”
Mariotti, who grew up within the Pacific Northwest, launched Ruby Home in 2017, and for the primary couple years of its existence, he didn’t even try to do any actual property offers, though he had obtained an actual property license. “It was actually nearly getting some respectable site visitors. In 2019, I used to be getting perhaps 20 or 30 individuals registering [on the website] per 30 days or making a displaying request. I used to be ignoring them. I wasn’t out promoting,” he says, including that he first obtained his actual property license merely to “get the feed of listings on my web site.”
Eventually, individuals who signed up on the Ruby Home web site started reaching out to Mariotti about shopping for houses. “I had wives of well-known individuals, well-known individuals themselves texting me together with Tommy Lee,” says Mariotti (although no transactions ended up occurring with the Mötley Crüe rocker.)
His first sale occurred in 2019. It was, he says, “an accident.”
“I answered my cellphone at 9 o’clock one evening. It was a lady searching for a house in Beachwood Canyon. She was involved in timber and a giant yard. I stated it is best to have a look at Outpost Estates. Two weeks later, she purchased a $2.8 million dwelling.” (Mariotti was then working as an actual property agent by way of the brokerage United Real Estate. “They are a flat payment brokerage,” says Mariotti, a distinction to many actual property brokerage, which takes a set proportion of agent’s commissions.)
Inside Skrillex’s former dwelling in Malibu.
Lauren Pressey
His largest sale to date was representing the consumers of Skrillex’s Malibu seashore home, who, sure, found Mariotti by way of a web based search. “They discovered us, they usually registered on the web site. They have been abroad shoppers from Australia who invested in luxurious properties across the globe. They have been staying at Shutters and have been right here for every week and wished to have a look at houses in Malibu. They stated, ‘Our finances is $20 million.’ OK, let’s go,” remembers Mariotti.
Last November, Mariotti took his enterprise one step additional. He arrange Ruby Home as a brokerage and now counts two different brokers, Judy Lin Young and Beata Mandell, as a part of his group. (Young joined in the summertime of 2020, whereas Mandell “approached me to be part of RubyHome — out of the blue — after repeatedly seeing Ruby Home present up in search engine outcomes pages,” he says.)
Altogether Mariotti, who additionally sells within the Pacific Northwest, did $40 million in gross sales in 2021. And whereas that doesn’t put him into the higher echelons of L.A.’s top-selling brokers — Jade Mills of Coldwell Banker, as an example, did $471 million in gross sales final yr, topping Real Trends’ California rankings — Mariotti speaks with stunned delight at promoting a celeb seashore home for practically $20 million.
“I didn’t see that coming. If you instructed me 5 years in the past, ‘Hey you’re going to try this,’ I wouldn’t have believed you.”
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/real-estate/ruby-homes-tony-mariotti-google-seo-celebrity-real-estate-1235098799/
