Prior to starting his career in real estate Ravi Kantha was a criminal prosecutor and later a white collar criminal defense attorney. While Kantha says he enjoyed his work, he felt like something was missing. Ultimately, he said it was a conversation with his then soon-to-be father-in-law, who is an insurance broker, that inspired him to make the leap into real estate.
“We talked about the two different career paths — law versus real estate — and ultimately, if you want to make real money as a lawyer you need to bring in business, which means that you need to sell your services,” Kantha said. “He asked me if I liked what I was doing. While I found it interesting, I didn’t really enjoy it. And he said, ‘If you don’t like what you are doing and what you are selling, nobody’s going to buy it from you. So, if you love real estate, you’ll be a lot better off in the long run.”
Although certainly a nerve-wracking decision at the time, Kantha’s career pivot has certainly paid off. As the team leader of the SERHANT.-brokered Ravi Kantha Team, he and his agents closed 33 transaction sides for a total of $105.35 million in sales volume in 2024, according to the 2025 RealTrends Verified Rankings. This performance earned his team the No. 22 rank among medium-sized teams in New York City for sales volume in the 2025 RealTrends City Rankings. Since their 2024 performance, Kantha’s team has grown from six agents to eight licensed real estate professionals.
HousingWire recently sat down with Kantha to discuss his career and how he has led his team to success.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Brooklee Han: Can you tell me about the early days of your real estate career?
Ravi Kantha: My first job was at a boutique brokerage focusing on townhouse and brownstone sales. It was there that I learned the power of focusing on a niche and the value of becoming an expert, because if you are an expert, then people want to hire you. Here I got to know the market at the deepest possible level. After about eight months I got my first listing, and it was from a cold call — I had never met the seller in person.
Eventually, I put together this massive deal that actually paid off all of my student loan debt, but it also helped me jump start my business. Once word got out that I had done this deal, my name started getting out there more and it just snowballed.
BH: Cold calling is definitely an old school way to lead generation. Is this still a lead generation strategy you use?
Kantha: When I started, I built my business in a very old-fashioned way — cold calls, hard copy mail, door knocking, dropping off letters. These are things people were taught to do in the 1960s, but they work because you build a personal connection. My view is that even today, door knocking and cold calling still work. The basic premise of all outreach is to provide something for nothing. Don’t call people and ask for business just for the sake of asking. You aren’t providing them with anything, so why would they engage with you? I tell our agents to offer something, give them information about the market, provide them value that they can’t get without us and then you can ask them if they are interested in selling.
BH: How and when did you decide to start a real estate team?
Kantha: As my business grew, my former business partner and I decided to team up and we hired an assistant to work with us. That same assistant is still with me, and she has grown as I have grown. Now my team has eight agents, and we have a director of operations, a marketing coordinator, an executive assistant and we just hired a full-time videographer for the team who will handle all social media and listing videography.
BH: What do you feel has been the key to the success of your team?
Kantha: I think we hold each other to high standards. I am a proponent of relentless accountability and transparency. If you say you are going to do something, you have to do it because that is the reality of our marketplace and our profession. Don’t put it off because if you do it right away, you’ll stand out from everyone else. Even if we don’t close I deal, I never want a client walking away feeling like we didn’t do enough for them. I always want to know if we could do more for a client and that is the ethos we operate with.
I’m also relentless with competition. I want to win everything and I want to surround myself with other people who want to win. Those are the people we want on the team.
BH: What is your biggest piece of advice for an agent interested in starting a team?
Kantha: Don’t rush into hiring. I think that is the number one mistake brokers make. They hire a lot of salespeople to do non-sales tasks. That is ineffective because you are putting people in a position to fail. You need to make sure you are putting people in positions that align with their skill set and [they are doing] things that they want to do. If they want to do it, they will work at it and get better. To me, how you unlock the right way to hire and build a team is to put people in a position to succeed and that will lead to your success.
