Tech Roundup: New Markets, New Funding and a Cool New Marketing Service
Bōde Empowers Consumers Buying a Home
Bōde is North America’s first peer-to-peer real estate platform empowering consumers with the critical information and tools needed to make smarter home-buying decisions. Bōde offers homeowners a tech-savvy way to sell their home quickly without incurring hefty real estate commissions.
As of today, properties in Calgary and Edmonton and surrounding regions can be listed on Bōde with ongoing platform advancement and refinement based on customer feedback. Buyers and sellers can deal directly with one another to view properties, make offers, negotiate terms and form their own contracts on the secure site.
Bōde has an impressive executive team and the Chairman of the Board is well-known Alberta entrepreneur Art Price, the former founder and CEO of Axia, chair of Sunterra Markets and former CEO of Husky Energy. To learn more, please visit www.bodecanada.com .
Offerpad to Enter Third Florida Market in Jacksonville
Offerpad announced that it will take its array of streamlined home buying and selling solutions to Jacksonville, Florida in January 2020. The Arizona company will introduce many more Florida homeowners to the company’s innovative features, which provide unparalleled customization and choice in home selling and buying.
Jacksonville will be Offerpad’s first market launch of 2020, among others; the company recently announced plans to expand to Birmingham, Alabama. Offerpad’s expansion focus is strategically dedicated to product development and extending reach within existing markets of operation.
The solutions Offerpad provides are currently available to residents throughout more than 700 towns and cities as the company has steadily opened in various locations throughout the country since its founding in 2015. After Jacksonville’s opening, Offerpad will be available in three major Florida metro areas and more than 200 cities between the company’s wide-reaching Florida footprints.
Porch Repair Estimate Report App Launches in Keller Williams App Store
Porch, a leading home improvement marketplace announces that the Porch Repair Estimate Report App is now fully integrated into Command, KW’s smart CRM-plus solution, and available to all Keller Williams U.S. agents via the KW MarketPlace, an app store on the Keller Cloud. The Porch Repair Estimate Report is a list of detailed cost estimates for deficiencies found during a home’s inspection. The estimates are backed by Porch, so agents can create a repair request addendum, and leverage it as part of the negotiation process with the seller.
For more information on the Porch Repair Estimate Report, visit https://www.repair-estimate.com/kw-agents
House Buyers of America Increases 2019 Q3 Revenue by 80% Over Same Period in 2018
House Buyers of America (House Buyers), the leading high-tech home buying company that is reinventing the industry with its direct, no ‘middle-man’ approach that charges no commissions or fees, announces the release of its third-quarter financials.
House Buyers’ revenue grew by 80% in Q3 2019 over Q3 2018, with a 33% increase in settlements. In September 2019 alone, compared to August 2019, the company’s settlements increased by 63%, resulting in a 54% expansion in revenue.
The House Buyers model is particularly valuable as 2020 approaches, and experts express concerns of a housing market slowdown and market recession. A recent panel of more than 100 housing experts and economists, moderated by Zillow.com, found that 51% of this group predicts home buying will decrease in 2020, while only 17% felt that activity would rise. For more information, please visit www.housebuyersofamerica.com.
Rex Closes $40 Million in C1 Round Funding
REX, the fast-growing, full-service residential broker that offers a more effective and less expensive way to buy and sell homes using big data and AI, today announced it had secured Series C1 funding of $40 million to complete its national expansion and broaden the availability of mortgage, insurance, escrow and other services it offers.
The company has headquarters in both Los Angeles and Austin, and offices in Arizona. Now operating in 23 cities in 17 states, REX is one of the very few disrupters in the residential real estate industry to raise more than $100 million in private equity to back its business. REX harnesses new technology to take the stress and confusion out of buying and selling homes and lowers consumer cost through a transaction-total commission of 2% compared to the 6% charged by most traditional brokers.
For more information, visit rexhomes.com and follow REX on Twitter @rex_change, Facebook, or Instagram.
Fiverr Launches Real Estate Store
Fiverr will soon be launching a real estate store. The store will house all the services real estate agents and agencies need to market themselves and their listings (Logo Design, Business Cards, Web & Mobile Design, Social Media Design, Email Marketing, Photoshop Editing, Virtual Staging, 3D Floor Plans, Local Photography, Slideshows & Promo Videos).
With a need to promote their listings both online and offline, real estate professionals need all the help they get and are turning to freelance talent for it. Agents from large real estate agencies like Compass and Keller Williams are turning to Fiverr for all their creative and digital needs. With access to a curated store full of skilled freelance talent to help them with all their needs, they can focus on what really matters for their business: their clients.
For more information, go to https://www.fiverr.com/stores/real-estate
Link to Agency storefront – https://www.fiverr.com/stores/real-estate-agency
Link to Property Listing storefront – https://www.fiverr.com/stores/real-estate-listing
Cloud CMA integrates Buyside to provide valuable intel on real-time buyer demand
W+R Studios, the leading software company focused on serving agents, brokers, and real estate professionals, and creator of Cloud CMA, announces a new partnership with Buyside that will give mutual clients access to one of the most competitive data analytics tools in real estate. The platform, powered by data analytics company, Buyside, aggregates buyer activity in real-time across major real estate search portals.
The partnership between Buyside and Cloud CMA allows sales professionals to deliver valuable reports that help potential sellers understand buyer intent better than ever before.
This product is available now to all Cloud CMA subscribers currently operating under a qualified broker account with a custom theme. To learn more about how Cloud CMA and Buyside can help your brokerage, contact Damon Alton, senior business development manager at W+R Studios at damon@wrstudios.com.
29 Technology Companies to Present at futuRE Pitch Battle
Twenty-nine technology companies named to present at futuRE, an invitation-only real estate technology pitch battle. Powered by Keller Williams, the world’s largest real estate technology franchise by agent count, futuRE will focus on “where the next generation of real estate begins.”
At futuRE, 29 tech companies will compete for votes from agents to access their businesses operating within the Keller Williams ecosystem and the Keller Cloud, a proprietary, AI-fueled real estate cloud for Keller Williams agents. The futuRE event takes place at the Aria hotel in Las Vegas on Dec. 9 and 10, 2019.
More than 450 real estate leaders on-site will vote together with agents in North America via live stream to select 10 finalists, one finalist per theme, to prioritize and onboard into the Keller Cloud. The first-place winner will receive a $15,000 prize and second place will receive a $5,000 prize. Top winners will be priority onboarded onto the Keller Cloud ahead of other finalists. The group of 29 tech companies was selected from an original list of more than 80 companies competing for access into the Keller Cloud during a weeklong voting process that happened in November 2019. For more information, visit kw.com.
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