Author: Eric Block

‘I’m waiting for spring to sell’: How to get sellers to list now

Here’s the formula you need to master to overcome this very common objection

If you are a real estate agent, then you have heard this objection from sellers many times: “I want to wait until spring to list my house.” This time of year, especially, many — if not most — sellers would prefer to wait until winter is over before they even think about selling their home.

That spring is the best time to sell is a ubiquitous idea in the homeselling world. And it’s not necessarily wrong. There are some advantages, for example:

The spring has a large number of buyers

More demand from people looking to get into their new home before school starts in the fall

Sellers often feel their homes look more appealing in the spring and summer

In colder climates, the weather itself is easier for buyers to deal with.

But are the spring and summer the only times to sell or even the best times to sell?

Understand their perspective, process and desired outcome
As an agent, this objection can be difficult to deal with. There are many advantages to selling in spring, and the idea is so entrenched among the general population that it can be tough to convince them otherwise on the phone or during an appointment.

But no matter how prevalent and persistent this objection might be, you deal with it in the same way that you deal with any objection: understand the potential client’s perspective, process and desired outcome.

The lead’s perspective is their past experience, knowledge and speculation.

Examples of perspectives that might lead to objections are “I’ve sold my home myself before,” “I’ve already met with an agent,” or “I can do what an agent does, you guys don’t do much.”

The lead’s process is their own plan that they have for their situation.

Examples of a process is “I’m going to sell my home myself,” “I’ll just use the agent I used before,” or “I am just going to wait until spring to sell my home and get a better deal.”

The process is typically what will lead to an objection. They have their plan, and you are not a part of it in their mind, so they turn you down.

And finally, the outcome. This is the unique result or benefit the lead believes their process will deliver for them.

Examples of these are “not wasting time,” “avoiding disappointment” and “proving to my neighbors or real estate agents or to the world that I am right.”

But there are advantages to selling in winter too
Your first job as a real estate agent is to understand what your potential clients are seeking to accomplish and how they think they are going to accomplish it.

Next, your job is to determine whether their outcome will better or more easily accomplished if they list their home now (in the winter) rather than waiting four months until spring arrives.

To do this, you have to let the lead know that there are also clear advantages to listing their home in the winter that may be beneficial to them in light of their goals.

Here are three reasons for sellers to list their homes in the winter:

Less competition: Because most sellers wait until the spring to list their homes, there are fewer homes on the market, which means less competition from other sellers. Additionally, the low inventory can create increase competition among buyers, which generally results in higher sale prices.
Winter brings serious buyers: Similar to why there is less competition in winter, this season draws out the serious buyers because most buyers think it is best to wait until spring to check out the market. The ones who do come out do so because they are serious and cannot wait until spring to purchase a home. These are not window shoppers, but motivated buyers who want to take advantage of the less competitive market and get their hands on their ideal home.

You can highlight the cozy winter side of your home: Show off your home’s winter-readiness. Have the fire going, showcase the hot tub, highlight the design and features that will make their life easier during winter, like an easy-to-shovel driveway, new roof and furnace, south-facing windows, and well-insulated pipes, among other things. These features, however simple, will show that your home can handle the harsh elements.

As a real estate agent, your job is to try to produce the best possible outcome for your client. To do this, you first have to get to the heart of what their desired outcome is. Start there.

Once you understand that, you then have to determine yourself if you think it would make sense for them to not wait until spring, given their desired outcome. If you think it makes sense, your next job is to convince them.

There are great reasons to sell in the spring, but there are also great reasons to sell in the winter.

Get to the bottom of their perspective, process and desired outcome, and then thoughtfully explain to them why it would be advantageous for them to not wait. That is how you will convince sellers to list this winter.

Coldwell Banker CEO predicts ‘storm of change’ in 2019

The real estate industry has been slow to evolve for years but will see rapid changes and more technology in 2019 than ever before, according to Coldwell Banker CEO and President Charlie Young.

“I feel like this is the storm of change that’s happening right now,” Young explained.

Young spoke to Inman in December, laying out his vision for what changes the real estate industry might see next year, and how his company, one of the many recognizable brokerage brands owned by holdings giant Realogy, will navigate them.

Broadly, Young said he expects to see “deeper penetration” of technologies that have been percolating for years, comparing the process to watching a hurricane form and then gradually move toward land.

“We have been watching the seeds of change coming at us for 10, 15 years now,” Young said. “But we are really in it now.”

Young pointed to Coldwell Bankers’ CBx Seller Leads technology as an example. The technology began as a presentation that agents could pull up on their iPads, but has since evolved into a system that draws on big data to streamline lead generation. Young said that such technologies are going to become more widespread in 2019, and in subsequent years.

Within five years, predictive analytics will drive this business,” he added.

Young believes there are several factors pushing the real estate industry to change more rapidly now than in years past.

For starters, consumers who are entirely comfortable with technology in other parts of their lives are “looking for those experiences in real estate.”

Agents themselves are changing as well. Increasingly, Young said, they’re seeing the benefits of technology, and they’re also younger.

“There’s been a demographic shift,” he continued. “You have more, younger, newer agents coming into the market with newer ideas.”

Economics are also driving change. Young pointed to the “sustained upswing” in the real estate market that has been happening for years, and added that the flow of cash is pushing people to innovate more quickly.

“You’ve got a lot of money flowing into this space that wasn’t flowing in five years ago,” he said.

Asked if a potential slowdown in the housing market — which many observers believe has already begun and will continue into 2019 — could impede the trend toward increased use of technology, Young speculated that in fact the opposite would be true.

In fact, agents during a slowdown may embrace technology more readily because it could make them more competitive.

However, Realtors working for large companies will have an advantage during 2019 in the event of a cooling market, Young said.

“When a market slows down, things like size and scope work to your advantage,” he continued. “I think that real estate professionals as a class are in a really good place on this spectrum of innovative change.”

Young mentioned several other projects that his company will be working on in 2019, including the NRT iBuyer program that was announced during the fall but remains in a test phase.

Other projects include real estate ads on Facebook that are tailored to users’ internet behaviors, and a voice search tool that uses Amazon’s Alexa platform. The voice search project is also still being tested.

Though Young provided few details about these projects, they offer a glimpse into fields — iBuying, social media and voice interfaces — that have become among the hottest and most competitive in the industry. Next year, then, they will continue to be battleground spaces.

And all of this will come after a year, 2018, that Young said was defined by new levels of “competitive intensity.”

“People are really fighting for their market share,” he said. “It was the year that we turned up the competitive intensity to a new level.”

Credit: Inman.com

A new survey reveals that millennials plan to retire by the young age of 56

As soon as many Americans begin working, they simultaneously begin planning their ideal retirements too.

According to a survey of 2,000 respondents by Provision Living Senior Living Communities, 52 percent of Americans say they think about retirement four or more times per week and the average ideal age for retirement is 60 — although millennials plan to retire earlier (56) than their baby boomer counterparts (64).

More than 78 percent of respondents say they’d like to stay stateside with Miami, San Diego, Denver, New York, and Orlando being the top five locales for retirees. Twenty-one percent said they’d like to live abroad with Italy being the top choice.

When it comes to their dream home, respondents said they’d like a one-story ranch near a coastal or beach setting. Millennials plan to have a bigger home at 1,890 square feet while baby boomers would like a property no bigger than 1,500 square feet.

Although these Americans have big plans for retirement, how close are they to actually making it happen? On average, respondents said they’d ideally like to have $610,000 in savings, with millennials saying they need more to retire ($687K) than baby boomers ($574K).

But, when asked how much they’ll realistically have in retirement savings, respondents, on average, said they’ll only have $276,000. By age group, millennials said they’ll have at least $357,000 in savings — $129,000 more than baby boomers.

Recent academic and consumer reports from groups such as the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies and companies such as Houzz and Zillow have highlighted baby boomers’ needs as they begin planning for retirement, with the greatest concerns being financial stability and accessibility.

The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies’ Housing America’s Older Adults study revealed that baby boomers are delaying retirement — Americans aged 65 to 79 have experienced 10 percent increase in wages over the past five years, signaling the fact that they’re staying in the workforce longer.

Despite that uptick in wages, JCHS says 9 million households aged 50 and over are barely raking in $15,000 per year, making the goal of having $574,000 in savings impossible.

Beyond affording retirement, baby boomers are increasingly looking for accessible housing, which includes ramp access, one-story home layouts, and bathrooms with safety bars and lower shower clearances.Eric Block is a glenview real estate agent with @properties serving the north shore and the city of Chicago.

Credit: https://www.inman.com

The future of real estate brokerages is coworking

Shared office space is cheaper and more productive, say Realtors who use companies like WeWork and Regus

A few weeks ago, Stribling and Associates broker Patrick W. Smith had just finished showing a property in Manhattan’s Financial District and needed a space where he could make several phone calls. Smith knew he could use Stribling’s offices on the Upper East Side, or he could head back to his home turf in Queen’s Long Island City. But both options were a schlep.

So instead, Patrick opened the WeWork app on his phone, found one of the company’s coworking spaces, and breezed through the door.

“It was actually adjacent to the building where I was doing the showing,” Smith told Inman. “Why would I waste time traveling?”

Smith was able to use the WeWork building because he is one of a growing number of professionals who have abandoned a traditional office in favor of paying a membership-type fee for shared space. Smith typically has a desk at the WeWork location in Long Island City, but his membership allows him to access any of the company’s locations. It’s an arrangement that Smith praised at length, and which both he and others who spoke to Inman said is likely to play a growing role in the real estate industry.

“It’s very efficient, very modern,” Smith added. “Our clients who have visited us, every one and I’m not exaggerating, every client who has come in has been so impressed.”

Smith isn’t alone. A report out earlier this year that surveyed over 18,000 people in 96 countries found that 91 percent using flexible workspace believed it enabled “employees in their company to be more productive while on the move.” An overwhelming percentage of respondents also said that flexible space also made it possible for employees to work remote, helped maximize profits and helped grow their businesses.

That last point was one of the main draws for Bobby Martins, an eXp broker in San Diego County. Martins pays $335 per month to use a Regus coworking space in Del Mar for 10 days a month. He ticked off a legion of benefits the space offers: the cost is vastly less than the $2,200 a month he used to pay for a conventional real estate office; there are various types of rooms he can book, meaning the office is highly flexible; and the amenities are great.

But most of all, Martins told Inman, he interacts at work with lawyers, accountants, and tech workers — all people outside of the real estate industry. The office, in other words, generates leads.

“In a traditional office you don’t get any business out of it, you’re not going to get any referrals or leads,” Martins said. “If someone is outgoing, [coworking] is really a good option for them because they’ll make lots of friends and they’ll get more business.”

Martins added that coworking is a “game changer” for the real estate industry, and believes that “the days of traditional offices are almost over” because the economics just don’t make sense.

“I think it’s the future,” he said. “I think these big giant real estate offices are just too big and the agents have to pay too much commission to the brokerage to keep them going. It’s just a matter of time before there’s just not enough money to pay that any more.”

The lower cost is also a major draw for Teresa Boardman, a broker who owns Boardman Realty in St. Paul, Minnesota. Boardman uses Fueled Collective, where month-long access starts at $375. Boardman described the space as a coffeeshop-like environment where she can take calls and meet clients. And it allows her to have a “prime downtown location” in Minneapolis for a fraction of the cost.

“I can’t imagine what I would rent that would be less expensive,” she told Inman. “For us, location matters.”

Different coworking providers have different models, but WeWork — which is valued at $45 billion — is perhaps the best known operator. It gives users access to desks, conference rooms, kitchens, and common areas. Companies can pay for as much, or as little, square footage as they need.

WeWork and its rivals have expanded rapidly in recent years, backed by venture capital and tech platforms that let users customize their experience. WeWork’s app, for example, functions almost like a social network and can be used to book conference rooms, network with other WeWorkers, or contact facilities staff.

The model has proven to be a hit among real estate professionals, with one luxury brokerage in Los Angeles even calling it a “roaring success” and using it to expand throughout the region.

Smith also expects to expand within the Long Island City WeWork. He recalled that when Stribling and Associates decided to open an office in Queens earlier this year, the company had the option of getting “an expensive storefront” location, but ultimately opted for the WeWork locale after touring the space and falling in love with it.

“The way they designed the space, they have beautiful lounges, floor to ceiling windows” he said. “You see the sky and views of Manhattan. I find that we’re more productive when you’re in an environment like that.”

Source: Inman.com

Inventory is rising, home prices could flatten in 2019

But don’t expect homes to get cheaper anytime soon with demand remaining high

Following years of steady appreciation, home prices could begin to flatten nationally in 2019, real estate economists told Inman.

Regionally, however, it’s a different story.

“Price growth is slowing, but homes are still selling for more than they were a year ago,” Redfin Chief Economist Darryl Fairweather told Inman. “With low unemployment and an overall strong economy, we don’t expect prices to fall in 2019. There just aren’t enough new homes being built or new listings to cause prices to drop below 2018 levels.”

A recent study by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) found that existing-home sales had fallen to a nearly three-year low following six straight months of falling or flat sales. In the same report, the median home value had risen to $258,100, which was up 4.2 percent year-over-year.


Inventory is starting to slowly rise as well. According to NAR’s most recent existing home sales report, inventory was up to 4.4 months of supply in September, slightly above the 4.2 months of supply reported in September 2017.


Windermere Real Estate Chief Economist Matthew Gardner said the lack of homes for sale in many markets has pushed prices to unsustainable levels, but that’s changing as more inventory hits the market, with sellers fearing that rising rates could slow demand.

“Across many parts of the country, we’re seeing a jump in the number of new listings as sellers attempt to time the market, fearing that rising interest rates will cause home prices to adjust down,” Gardner said.

A characteristic of the current market is that more homes are seeing price reductions as they hit the market, according to Gardner. Many homesellers have come to market with unrealistic expectations, which has led to a 15 percent increase in price reductions nationally, he said.

“These price reductions are putting downward pressure on home prices at the moment but, as sellers’ expectations become more realistic, home prices should begin rising again, but at significantly slower rates as we move steadily back toward a more balanced market,” Gardner added.

Lending Tree Chief Economist Tendayi Kapfidze said he also expects a gradual deceleration in home-price gains, but the chance of national price declines is quite slim.

“The broader economic environment is still supportive for house prices with firm demand because of a strong labor market and still limited supply, although this is now improving,” Kapfidze said. “There are likely to be localized declines in home prices in areas where affordability is weakest and valuations have gotten the most stretched.”

Ruben Gonzalez, the chief economist at Keller Williams, believes prices will increase again next year, but at a slower rate — around 4 percent.

“I don’t think we’re gonna see declines in the near future,” Gonzalez said. “Typically, when we’ve seen price declines, in the last three decades or so, usually we see inventory levels well above six months, usually in the eight- to nine-month range. We’ve got quite a ways to go in terms of inventory shifting before we start to see declines in home prices.”

The year-over-year increase in the median price of existing homes continues to rise, but as the year progresses, the total percentage increase is slowing. The median existing home price was up 4.2 percent year-over-year in September, the third time in three months the year-over-year increase was under 5 percent. Earlier in the year and late last year, the year-over-year increase was routinely more than 5 percent, even nearing 6 percent.


The most recent data from the Federal Housing Authority found that home prices in August rose more than 6 percent, year-over-year, but only jumped 0.4 percent month-to-month and actually decreased by 0.7 percent in the Mid-Atlantic, month-over-month.

Danielle Hale, the chief economist at realtor.com, thinks the market still has awhile to go before an unhealthy level of affordability pushes prices down.

“There is still some room for both home prices and mortgage rates to increase before we get to a level of unaffordability that has historically been cause for concern,” Hale said. “Aging millennials forming households will provide a strong boost to housing demand that should keep prices from slipping in the near future.”

“One potential caveat to this analysis is that higher levels of debt could prevent this millennial generation from buying homes at levels of affordability that were comfortable for previous generations,” Hale added. “If higher debt loads are an obstacle, the market may see demand (and housing prices) drop off before home prices rise another 10 percent and mortgage rates rise to 5.5 percent.”

Chavi Hohm, the team leader of Team Diva at Coldwell Banker Bain, said prices have actually already started to drop in Seattle, and next spring, the market will be flooded with new inventory in the condo and luxury market. Hohm offered some advice for agents on the changing market.

“Many of the buyer’s agents are new to real estate and lack the follow-up skill set to encourage buyers back into the market to scoop up the deals,” Hohm said. “Those with good follow skills will win in this market.”

James Clifford, a managing broker with Washington Realty Group in Sumner, Washington, said pricing will really vary depending on the regional market.

“Our area continues to have employment growth and population growth,” Clifford said. “As long as we have both of those prices will not go down. Locations with diminishing population and stagnate job numbers will most likely be price sensitive.”

Last month, a Redfin agent in Portland said she believed the market had hit its peak, in a news release about price appreciation slowing around the country.

“I don’t have a crystal ball, but I wouldn’t count on your home appreciating and being worth more in the spring than it is now,” Rebecca Walter, a Redfin agent said. “The [Federal Reserve] has indicated they will make one more rate hike in December, which would impact buyers’ purchasing power. We have this window before the market slows for the holidays, so the sooner the better if you’re planning to sell.”

Credit: Inman.com

Sellers still rule for 2 years, says Zillow

It won’t be a buyer’s market until 2020, but home price growth has slowed in more than half of the nation’s largest metros, according to the study

The industry may not see a buyer’s market until at least 2020, according to a majority of real estate economists surveyed by Zillow and Pulsenomics LLC.

In the real estate technology company’s latest “2018 Q3 Zillow Home Price Expectations Survey,” more than 75 percent of approximately 100 economists surveyed predicted the market won’t favor buyers until 2020 at the earliest.

“For the past several years, home sellers held all the cards at the negotiating table, fielding multiple offers while buyers faced stiff competition and a fast-moving market,” said Aaron Terrazas, Zillow’s senior economist. “Conditions are starting to show signs of easing up, but the effects of years of limited construction still linger.”

“Inventory is still falling on an annual basis, and home values are growing well above their historic pace,” Terrazas added. “Although these trends are starting to lose their edge, it is far too soon to call it a buyer’s market.”

Home value appreciation has been faster in 2018 than in 2017, according to Zillow’s data. Inventory has also dropped on a year-over-year basis for 42 consecutive months – signs that the market is firmly in favor of sellers.

Home growth is slowing in more than half of the nation’s 35 largest metros, with price cuts becoming more common. Even in markets where appreciation has slowed, prices remain high and sellers continue to have the upper hand, according to Zillow. Home values are also expected to rise an additional 5.9 percent in 2018, according to the data.

While more than 75 percent of respondents believe a buyer’s market won’t emerge until 2020 at the earliest, 43 percent of respondents believe the market will shift towards buyers in 2020. Regionally, economists believe the Midwest will start to favor buyers before other regions.

“While ongoing supply constraints are reinforcing the floor on home prices right now, the experts’ forecasts still imply the joists will start to crack sometime next year, and result in sub-three percent annual home-value appreciation in 2020 and beyond,” said Terry Loebs, the founder of Pulsenomics LLC, the research and economists firm that conducted the Zillow sponsored the survey.

“For the first time, a majority of the experts said that there is downside risk to their long-term outlook for home values nationally – and they outnumber experts who assigned upside risk to their forecasts by more than a three-to-one ratio,” Loebs added.

DocuSign passes Zillow’s market cap, and NAR is reaping the rewards

DocuSign, the cloud-based electronic signature platform, is skyrocketing in value and even overtook real estate tech giant Zillow Group in market capitalization, according to public stock data from Yahoo. The National Association of Realtors (NAR) is reaping the reward of the prudent investment through its venture arm, Second Century Ventures (SCV).

At the close of the trading day, Zillow Group’s market capital – the market value of a public company’s shares  – sat at $8.56 billion with DocuSign at $8.66 billion. See the market caps below from Yahoo Finance.

SCV invested in DocuSign nearly a decade ago and sold 28 percent of its 5.6 million shares – netting NAR a $20 million windfall – when DocuSign went public in April. But its remaining shares continued to balloon in value.

When DocuSign went public, it opened its first day of trading with a market cap of roughly $4.4 billion.

A spokesperson for NAR told Inman that SCV sold an addition 1.2 million shares on September 18. SEC filings were not immediately available, but Jackson Square Ventures, also an early investor in DocuSign, sold that same day at $55 per share, which would have netted SCV $66 million.

SCV would roughly still own 2.832 million shares in the company, which is currently trading at $52.35 – a value of slightly more than $148 million. Not bad for what was reported as an initial $5 million investment.

Zillow breaks into lead referral business

The new pilot program, which launches in Florida under Premier Broker, will give Zillow a cut of the commission as brokerages generate leads with no upfront costs.

Zillow is testing a new referral service in Florida that could shake up how it does business, and for the first time in the company’s history, earn a piece of the real estate commission pie — a step it has avoided since the company launched 14 years ago.

The pilot program, which will operate under the umbrella of Zillow’s Premier Broker lead-generation platform, allows brokerages to receive a limited number of leads with no upfront cost. Brokerages then pay a portion of the brokerage commission once a deal is closed — which Zillow refers to as a “performance advertising expense.”

A Zillow spokesperson declined to comment on what the portion of the commission will be, but noted it could change as testing continues.

Greg Schwartz, president of media and marketplaces at Zillow Group, wrote in a blog post introducing the new program that the change comes as a response to broker feedback.

“You told us that it’s sometimes disruptive to pay for advertising in advance and you would advertise more if we could change the timing of the payments,” wrote Schwartz.

Premier Broker is launching first in Florida with two partners: NextHome and Keyes Realtors. Brokerages in the state that are interested in participating are encouraged, in the post, to contact the company.

“Helping our members work with more buyers and sellers is our primary focus,” James Dwiggins, CEO of NextHome told Inman. “Ongoing marketing costs can be expensive for most brokers and agents, so a fee for success allows every dollar earned to be a win.”

“We are always open to exploring new partnerships that benefit our agents, and with our continuing expansion of offices across the country, we are positioned to provide the coverage Zillow is looking for in piloting their new program,” Dwiggins added.

Right now, Zillow only has plans to launch the pilot in markets that are underserved by Premier Broker and Premier Agent — where there aren’t enough advertisers to meet the demand of home shoppers. The new program is not intended to displace Premier Agent or Premier Broker, the former of which is a top revenue earner for Zillow and a program that’s currently being updated.

“We see this as a win-win for homeshoppers in these underserved markets and for Premier Broker clients,” Schwartz wrote. “Prospective buyers and sellers will receive responses from our Premier Broker clients, and broker partners will be able to take advantage of a pricing system that makes sense for their bottom line.”

The new program would put Zillow in direct competition with Opcity and the newly launched Rocket Homes, referral services powered by major companies. Opcity was recently acquired by Move Inc., a subsidiary of News Corp and the operator of realtor.com, and Rocket Homes is a sibling company of Quicken Loans.

Real estate’s new disruptors: The ‘PayPal Mafia’

A group of hard-charging, investor-entrepreneurs who have built some of the world’s most iconic tech companies have launched a multi-pronged assault on the real estate industry. A striking number come from two groups: the so-called “PayPal mafia” and private equity behemoth Blackstone Group.



Their combined wealth, experience and commitment to mutual support should cause market incumbents to take their projects seriously, despite the long history of failed bids to fundamentally change the real estate business.


Serving as financiers, managers or a combination of the two, these Silicon Valley and private equity vets — at least four of whom are controversial libertarian billionaires — have helped reshape a number of industries, and they are determined to do the same to real estate. Tying together the fortunes and industry ambitions of many of these players are three real estate startups in particular: Opendoor, Roofstock and Bungalow.


At least five of this coterie, including Opendoor co-founder Keith Rabois and Gawker-slayer Peter Thiel, all hail from the “PayPal mafia,” a group that built the online payments giant PayPal, and later moved on to found or provide key financing to some of the world’s highest-profile tech companies, including YouTube, Tesla Motors, LinkedIn, Yelp, Facebook, Yammer and Palantir Technologies.


A number of others cut their teeth with Blackstone, the private equity behemoth that showed it was possible to buy and manage tens of thousands of single-family homes. Other worthy mentions include former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick and Silicon Valley investor titan Marc Andreessen.


The PayPal mafia


In his critical book of Silicon Valley hotshots,”The Know-It-Alls,” author Noam Cohen described the PayPal mafia as a group of “self-styled survival-of-the-fittest free-marketers commit[ed] to a strategy of collective risk and mutual support.”


To understand how the clique can turn startups into rocket ships, consider LinkedIn. The social network was founded by PayPal mafia member Reid Hoffman; got financing from members Peter Thiel and Keith Rabois; and received office space from another former PayPal colleague, Cohen wrote. Hoffman later paid this help forward to the group of PayPal vets who created YouTube with financing and office space, according to Cohen.


“My membership in a notable corporate alumni group in Silicon Valley has opened the door to a number of breakout opportunities,” Hoffman has said.


Read it all at Inman

Keller Williams is building a new consumer-facing app to challenge Zillow and Redfin

Keller Williams has acquired SmarterAgent, a mobile-first platform that connects to more than 650 multiple listing services and allows brokers and agents to create branded real estate search apps, Inman has learned.

The move to acquire the technology platform, which currently serves more than 300 brokerages, will allow the real estate franchisor to compete directly with search giants like Zillow and Redfin, Keller Williams Chief Innovation Officer Josh Team told Inman.

“As we’re breaking out more and more of our technology platform, consumers are a big part of that,” Team said. “We’re going to be launching our new consumer strategy in the first quarter of next year and mobile will obviously be a big piece of that.”

Keller Williams is currently SmarterAgent’s largest client. The technology platform boasts more than 400,000 active agents and 20 percent of the brokerages listed on Real Trends 500 use SmarterAgent, according to Team.

“We are building the end-to-end platform for real estate,” Team said. “SmarterAgent, our agent’s branded mobile app, will be connected in real-time with their database, marketing plans and Kelle, our AI, as part of an all-in-one system, allowing Keller Williams agents to simplify their life and focus on providing the best consumer experience.

Keller William’s decision to acquire SmarterAgent was a defensive move against tech distributors in the industry, Team said. Founded a decade ago by brothers Brad and Eric Blumberg in Philadelphia, SmarterAgent hands Keller Williams a team of 31 mobile developers and MLS knowledge as it pushes to develop a state-of-the-art consumer-facing app. There are no plans for layoffs and Keller Williams will retain the company’s senior management team.

“You’ve heard Gary [Keller] talk about the agent-enabled tech versus the tech-enabled agent, and so the idea of a Zillow or Redfin coming in and buying SmarterAgent then having access to all 400,000 agents’ mobile apps out there being used by millions of people was something that was concerning to us,” Team said.

Team said the acquisition is a signal to Keller Williams agents that the company is serious about its investment in technology and revealed that the company has quietly acquired a number of other tech platforms in the past four months.

Team declined to provide the names of the companies acquired by Keller Williams but said that among them is one of the largest property management software platforms, a home inspection product and a company focused on real estate data, AI, predictive intelligence and contract parsing. The acquisitions come as Keller Williams seeks to launch virtual brokerages for its expansion franchises.

“Now is the time that the brokerage community joins as brother in arms,” Team said. “The more that we can help every agent’s mobile application get better, the more that we can help every brand defend their share of market right now – as we move into a slower market and some of these companies are operating on razor thin margins and not making profit at all – they’re going to be challenged.”

SmarterAgent checks off an important box as part of Keller Williams’ multi-pronged roadmap to enhancing its technology.

“The foundation is a connected real estate platform and on top of that you have three core focuses: your brokerage operating platform, agent-operating platform and consumer operating platform,” Team said. “The SmarterAgent acquisition allows us to speed up the deployment of the consumer arm of that. They already have the foundation, we just have to enhance it, improve it, and build a better consumer experience.”

Keller Williams declined to provide terms of the acquisition, but Team said the funding of the SmarterAgent acquisition and other recent acquisitions stem from the company’s $1 billion tech fund, which was announced at Inman Connect San Francisco in 2017.