How an L.A. Real Estate Agent Used Google SEO to Sell Celebrity Homes

Tony Mariotti, who repped the customer of Skrillex's $17.5 million Malibu seashore home final 12 months, breaks into the world's hyper-competitive market in an surprising vogue.

The previous dwelling of Skrillex in Malibu which offered for $17.5 million final 12 months. Tony Mariotti of Ruby House repped the purchasers.Lauren Pressey/Courtesy of Ruby House

There’s a notion that to change into a prime agent in L.A.’s ultra-competitive actual property market, one must have private connections. Referrals and networking are the muse of success. Or, as one wag lately put it, “You want to know wealthy individuals.”

However one agent, Tony Mariotti of Ruby House, breaks that mould. Final 12 months, he repped the patrons of a $17.5 million Malibu seashore home owned by Skrillex and represented Rock and Roll Corridor of Famer Joe Elliott of Def Leppard in his buy of a $2.3 million pied-a-terre in West Hollywood, as reported by Grime.

Mariotti’s shoppers on these gross sales weren’t related to him by referral or phrase of mouth. They merely discovered him via his Ruby House web site, which Mariotti has shrewdly optimized to rank on web page one in all Google Seek for a number of phrases. Kind in “luxurious properties Los Angeles” and Ruby House comes up because the fifth end result. Kind “Fowl Streets properties” or “Los Angeles penthouses” or “Trousdale Estates,” and Mariotti’s website ranks No. 1., forward of Zillow. In complete, Mariotti did $33 million in gross sales in Southern California in 2021, up from $5 million the 12 months earlier than.

Tony Mariotti, founding father of Ruby House.Lauren Pressey

Mariotti leaned into his digital publishing background to nab these high-ranking outcomes, which in flip generate buyer leads and finally gross sales. “I’m acquainted with what digital publishers attempt to do to get eyeballs and advert impressions,” says the agent. “I sort of took the publishing mentality into constructing Ruby House.”

To that finish, he began publishing weblog posts concerning the structure and character of assorted neighborhoods round Los Angeles on Ruby House’s web site, alongside actual property listings. “I used to be considering if I can write about issues that I really like like structure neighborhoods and business — all three are inextricably sure particularly in L.A. — possibly individuals will present up and examine [for example] Carroll Avenue’s Victorian homes,” he says. “I sort of constructed evergreen content material about neighborhoods. I’m making an attempt to outrank Zillow, Trulia and Redfin, which simply supply properties on the market.”

Mariotti, who grew up within the Pacific Northwest, launched Ruby House in 2017, and for the primary couple years of its existence, he didn’t even try to do any actual property offers, regardless that he had obtained an actual property license. “It was actually nearly getting some respectable visitors. In 2019, I used to be getting possibly 20 or 30 individuals registering [on the website] per thirty 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.”

Ultimately, individuals who signed up on the Ruby House web site started reaching out to Mariotti about shopping for properties. “I had wives of well-known individuals, well-known individuals themselves texting me together with Tommy Lee,” says Mariotti (although no transactions ended up taking place 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 night time. It was a girl in search of a house in Beachwood Canyon. She was interested by timber and a giant yard. I mentioned it's best to take a look at Outpost Estates. Two weeks later, she purchased a $2.8 million dwelling.” (Mariotti was then working as an actual property agent via the brokerage United Actual Property. “They're a flat charge brokerage,” says Mariotti, a distinction to many actual property brokerage, which takes a set share of agent’s commissions.)

Inside Skrillex’s former dwelling in Malibu.Lauren Pressey

His greatest sale to this point was representing the patrons of Skrillex’s Malibu seashore home, who, sure, found Mariotti via a web-based search. “They discovered us, and so they registered on the web site. They had been abroad shoppers from Australia who invested in luxurious properties across the globe. They had been staying at Shutters and had been right here for every week and needed to take a look at properties in Malibu. They mentioned, ‘Our price range is $20 million.’ OK, let’s go,” remembers Mariotti.

Final November, Mariotti took his enterprise one step additional. He arrange Ruby House as a brokerage and now counts two different brokers, Judy Lin Younger and Beata Mandell, as a part of his group. (Younger joined in the summertime of 2020, whereas Mandell “approached me to hitch RubyHome — out of the blue — after repeatedly seeing Ruby House 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, for example, did $471 million in gross sales final 12 months, topping Actual Developments’ California rankings — Mariotti speaks with shocked delight at promoting a celeb seashore home for practically $20 million.

“I didn’t see that coming. Should you advised me 5 years in the past, ‘Hey you’re going to try this,’ I wouldn’t have believed you.”