WATCH: How viral videos helped build this real estate agent’s business

Here’s a new metric for ranking top brokers: YouTube views.

With over 15 million of them, Union Square Property Management’s Cash Jordan would be high on that list. But while views are the ultimate currency in the social media world, they haven’t been a balm for the pandemic’s deep cuts to the real estate market in 2020.

“For the last decade, it’s been a seller’s market,” Jordan said. “You post an ad, there’s more than one person that wants to rent, you don’t need a video.”

Jordan, who started as a broker in the late aughts, said he hadn’t intended to change his way of doing business. “Had 2020 been like 2019, I might not have,” he said.

But the rental market, which is more of a volume business, was hit hard due to the pandemic. For Jordan, the extra revenue stream that he picked up from YouTube helped during the crisis.

Watch the video below to hear about Jordan’s business model, and to find out why he does many of his videos for free.

TRD also went behind the scenes with Jordan at one of his East Village listings to see how he creates a video for YouTube. “I’m just saying it like I see it,” he said of his approach to apartment tours. Watch the video for more.