Bernadette Brennan is no stranger to the spotlight.
Before she became a star real estate agent, she worked in the music business, managing producers for a number of famous artists whose records have soared to the No. 1 Billboard spot.
She moved to the city at age 18 and by 21 had founded her own boutique recording and management company called Nightlife Productions & Entertainment, representing both DJs and artists. Throughout her career in the recording industry, Brennan has rubbed elbows with musical icons such as Beyoncé, Britney Spears, Madonna and Seal.
And that was all before she started working with Ryan Serhant, the real estate broker behind the hit Netflix reality series Owning Manhattan and Bravo’s Million Dollar Listing New York. Now rolling cameras are just another part of her workday.
“I feel like a lot of times we’re actually shooting, or living in, the show,” Brennan said.
Brennan’s transition from music to the world of real estate was rather fortuitous. To help keep Nightlife Productions afloat, Brennan began renting out office space for artists to use as recording studios, becoming what she calls a kind of “WeWork for creatives” before anyone actually knew that name. She did business with Jay-Z, Alicia Keys and Fountains of Wayne.
“We became like the go-to person for artists to run recording studios, and that was how I started transitioning from music to real estate,” she said. “That’s what floated our company, and that’s also what began my love of real estate.”
Her budding passion for the sector coincided with the unfortunate decline of the record business as the trend of downloading music exploded. After more than a decade working in the music industry, Brennan then started her own real estate firm, New Leaf Realty, which she describes as a small brokerage mostly focused on commercial spaces and some residential.
Her two worlds, however, often collided. While at New Leaf, Brennan was able to leverage her relationships in the music industry to sell a property to the musical director of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. She also landed a blockbuster deal to lease out the entirety of a massive warehouse in Brooklyn, which was mostly filled with recording studios. It caught Serhant’s eye, and she was recruited in 2022 to join the firm.
Brennan started and now leads Serhant’s first commercial team. In the last year alone, she has secured listings valued at over $500 million, and she recently closed on a $50.5 million deal for vacant office space at 548 W. 22nd St. She also continues to marry her two passions. She’s about to close on 369 W. 46th St., a nightclub in Times Square, whose owner she knew for many years.
“I helped open the club, and then he hired me to sell it, and now we’re about to close on that property,” said Brennan.
One of her latest endeavors is her effort to sell 281 Park Ave. South, the former photography museum Fotografiska, which she calls the real estate firm’s “trophy building.” It’s on the market with an undisclosed asking price, said Brennan. It was last listed in 2022 for $135 million.
“It’s a landmark building,” she said. “We’re definitely getting interest.”
Besides music and real estate, Brennan’s other passion is her husband and two kids. When she’s not coming up with pitches, leading her team or onsite at one of her buildings, she’s cooking dinner with her children and otherwise managing their lives. She loves taking them out to explore — seeing Broadway shows and musicals, checking out a new restaurant or a longtime tourist attraction — in the city that is both her workspace and her backyard.
“I do a lot of things in between drop-off and pickup,” she said. “We’re so close to everything.”
