On a quiet day at the Oppenheim Group, Maya Vander remarks that lately she hasn’t seen any houses she’s interested in selling. Chrishell Stause silently adjusts her blowout and checks her manicure. Zelda and Niko, the chihuahua mixes co-parented by Jason Oppenheim and Mary Fitzgerald, wander across the wooden floor. 

“The silent of the lamb,” Maya says, seemingly to no one.

Her co-worker Heather Rae El Moussa lets out a short laugh. Mary turns around from her desk, placing her chin on her hand. “You what?”

“The silent of the lamb,” Maya repeats with a wry smile. More silence, and we cut to the next scene.

The Silent of The LambMaya's most memorable quote.

The joke — seemingly a filler moment in between dramatic plotlines — would soon become one of the 39-year-old’s most iconic quotes. “People always comment on that line for whatever reason,” Maya says of the Season 1, Episode 6 phrase, a mistranslation from her native Hebrew. “My producer told me that it almost didn’t make the cut!”

Nestled among drone shots of luxe McMansions and slow-motion entrances of real estate agents dripping in designer labels, these kinds of moments are at the heart of Selling Sunset. Sitting at the corner of two streets named “Sunset,” the O Group’s office hasn’t changed much despite three years of reality television fame (and counting). It’s airy and homey, with exposed brick walls and brown leather couches framing the agents’ signature aluminum desks. The room is always filled with the sound of long nails clacking away on Macbooks, before someone inevitably breaks the silence with a wild comment and a laugh — the camaraderie that’s at stake while everyone is fighting.

These kinds of moments are what Maya will miss the most about filming the show. “Obviously, I’m in Miami, so I fly, and I always tell the producers, ‘I don't want to fly all the way to do an office scene,’ ”she says from her Florida home. “But when you’re filming for three hours, four hours, the cameras are just rolling, and we’re just talking. When it’s not all of us, when it’s just a couple of girls, we can all catch up and really talk to each other.”

Sunset’s first agent is taking her final bow. During Season 5, Maya says goodbye to the show after three years of catfights, couture and increasingly opulent brokers’ opens, instead choosing to live and work full-time alongside her husband and children in Miami. Throughout her time on the show, the camera has followed Maya alongside some of her biggest moments as she dips her toes into development and grows her family, and even as she discovers she’s pregnant for the first time in Season 1.

Maya isn’t Chrishell or Christine, Sunset’s two perennial contenders for top dog, and she doesn’t try to be. She typically remains neutral among the group’s Cold War–esque alliances. Her humor is subtle but lingers, always requiring a few seconds of silent processing before the eventual laugh comes. Unlike many of her office counterparts, she doesn’t spend on splashy designers, preferring instead to buy from brands like Theory, Reiss and Intermix. Ever the voice of reason, Maya is honest with an edge, saying what’s on everyone’s minds without even the tiniest hint of snark.

This is something that Maya says is intentional, saying there’s a “tricky” line between not wanting to get involved in drama but also remaining relevant to the group’s dynamics. “If someone is wrong and someone is doing something wrong, I would say that,” she says. “But it’s not my goal to put someone down or fight with anyone.”

Maya never dreamed of starring on reality television. She did, however, dream of Selling Sunset. A few years before she even began working with the O Group, she dreamed up a way to improve upon the success of Bravo’s Million Dollar Listing. On Facebook, she started DMing with one of the show’s producers, pitching her idea: An all-woman version. “He said, ‘That’s a good idea,’ but that’s where it ended. Nothing happened,” she says. “I should have actually come to [Selling Sunset showrunner Adam DiVello] with that idea. I probably would have gotten paid more!”

Soon after, everything would come together to create the idea she “manifested.” Maya joined the Oppenheims in 2015 as an agent, becoming the first cast member to join owners Jason and Brett. Soon after, DiVello, who previously created reality empires The Hills and Laguna Beach, approached the group after seeing one of their now-famous billboards while driving on Sunset Boulevard. Now, after five seasons of Selling Sunset later, Maya can say with certainty that her pitch was a good one.

Maya runs down her list of favorites from her time on the show. Favorite property she’s sold? The Season 5 Santa Monica house, since she oversaw it from scratch. Favorite line? Other than “silent of the lamb,” it has to be her Season 4, Episode 6 joke about Christine stalking Keanu Reeves. Favorite outfit? Her Season 4 Jonathan Simkhai finale dress. Favorite friend from the show? Davina Potratz, whom she calls frequently and is almost her on-screen polar opposite: Always in the drama.

Today, Maya’s dealing with drama in the form of a snake attempting to get inside her house; the critters in Florida, she says, are a big change from Los Angeles’ wildlife. In workout gear and a ponytail, she says she’s not “camera-ready”; she’s running out the door soon to pick up her children, Aiden, 3, and Elle, 2, from daycare, and will start working once again when they go to bed. The family doesn’t have a full-time nanny, and despite how busy she is juggling real estate and filming responsibilities with family time, she says she wouldn’t want one. (“It’s just not me.”)

Those increasing family responsibilities ultimately fueled Maya’s decision to say goodbye to Sunset. Though she’s been in Miami on and off since Season 1, she told production ahead of Season 5 that once she gave birth to her third child, she wouldn’t be able to commute to Los Angeles every week to film. Throughout the season, Maya is visibly pregnant, and says the goodbye party that the O Group throws for her in Episode 9 is actually a baby shower. Just two months later in December 2021, she publicly shared that she experienced a devastating late-term stillbirth.

Though Maya says she imagines watching the season back — and especially the baby shower — will be “sad,” she’s not hiding her experience with pregnancy loss. “I'm okay sharing the story, hopefully to help other women,” she says. “I have my moments, but life goes on, and I’m OK most days.” Now Maya says her priority is to become pregnant once again.

Another focus of hers, she says, is growing the Maya Vander Group, her Florida-based team of agents under Keller Williams. She doesn’t have her brokerage license  and isn’t entirely certain she wants to open her own brokerage. (“Being on the show, you’re a target for a lot of lawsuits.”) She just launched a course for real estate agents to help build their business, and is focusing on building a network of clients in the Miami area.

For Maya, the business hasn’t changed much since the start of the show. The bulk of her clients come by way of word-of-mouth and online advertisements, not Sunset publicity. The commissions haven’t increased, and in some cases have even gone down. What has changed is day-to-day life: Though her children are too young to understand her fame, Maya says teachers and fellow parents at her children’s school have admitted to her that they’re avid Sunset watchers. What’s the worst, she says, is when people say they don’t watch the show but know every single storyline; the husbands typically blame it on their wives. “I’m like, ‘You totally watched it. Just own it,’ ”she says. “Nobody wants to admit they watch Selling Sunset.”

Though her busy schedule leaves little time for the show, Maya says she’s still eager to meet up with the cast whenever possible — a few weeks ago, she saw everyone in Los Angeles for a photo shoot, and soon they’re getting together for a reunion hosted by Queer Eye star Tan France. And Maya’s hoping to make cameos in future seasons — she can make the trip to Los Angeles once a month, she says, just not every week.

Most of all, she says she’ll miss those smaller office scenes, with just four or five of the other women scattered around those massive aluminum O Group desks, giggling for hours on end about nothing. “Nobody is going to quit on their own, I tell you,” she says. “If they told me, ‘Yes, come out once a month,’ I’d be like, ‘Sign me.’ I don’t care who’s complaining and all that — nobody wants to leave the show. It’s a great opportunity. Even though I always complain to producers about me flying back and forth, I made it happen, because I wanted to be part of it.”

Maya's Farewell PartyThe First Agent of The Oppenheim Group bids adieu.