Serhant Loses Loy Carlos to Nest Seekers

Serhant has lost a top luxury agent.

Loy Carlos is leaving the three-year-old brokerage to join Nest Seekers as the president of the firm’s new Global Wealth division, where he will advise ultra-high net worth clients and oversee the division’s day-to-day and strategic direction.

Carlos joined Serhant in 2021 as head of the firm’s “Signature” divisions, which handles properties asking $10 million or more. The broker’s move came after a four-year stint at Corcoran, where he worked on veteran top-producer Carrie Chiang’s team.

Carlos counted $188 million in listing volume in 2021, the year he joined Serhant, marking the second highest at the firm, according to The Real Deal’s ranking of top listing agents in Manhattan. Last year, he represented the seller of an Upper East Side townhouse who defied a slowing market to nab a deal for nearly $60 million.

Serhant, who departed Nest Seekers to found his own firm after counting nearly half of the listing volume at CEO Eddie Shapiro’s brokerage, did not immediately return a request for comment.

Carlos is the third high-profile agent to leave Serhant this year and the second to end up at Nestseekers.

The four-person W Team, ranked by RealTrends as a top-25 small-team by volume last year with $102 million in self-reported sales, departed for Compass in July.

Serhant in February terminated agent Tamir Shemesh, his third abrupt exit from a New York City brokerage in recent memory. The top agent, whose team ranked 7th on TRD’s 2021 ranking of Manhattan brokers with $249 million in sell-side deals, landed at Nestseekers later that week.

Carlos left real estate in 2011 before returning to the industry in 2017 when he joined Chiang’s team. In the interim, he founded a lifestyle magazine called Classiques Modernes and a company that handled aspects of luxury living, from property management to event planning.

“I needed a change in direction and career,” he told TRD in 2021 of that period. “Otherwise, I would be showing apartments for the rest of my life. I never intended to be just full-time doing real estate.”