Adrien Jorge, Founder and CEO explained:

“A real estate transaction is someone's most important financial moment, yet most of it is still happening offline, handled by traditional freelance agents who close on average only one sale and six rentals transactions per year.”

Propseller’s focus on fully digitizing real estate for Singaporeans, where it’s headquartered, started only two years ago. 

“At Propseller, we believe that consumers deserve an incomparable experience and full transparency for a fair price. It happens that technology is capable of helping to achieve this: we sell homes 2 times faster than average and our service is rated 4.8/5 on average by our clients.”

Propseller focuses on offering property owners an all-encompassing agent service that covers the initial valuation to the closing sale for half the standard commission percentage. 

Short-term goals include tripling the size of the team and lead the Singaporean market by 2021. 

As someone whose job is selling property, we imagine you don’t have an awful lot of time to hunt around for technology providers. Agent Tech Finder is a new marketplace site from Online Marketplaces Group which brings together all of the products from PropTech companies around the world and puts them in front of agents to compare and use the one that best suits their needs and not just the one from the company with the biggest marketing budget.

Below, the Agent Tech Finder team has put together a sample of 9 of the best marketing solutions available on the site. If you aren’t convinced by any of these, there is a free pdf download of 35+1 marketing products designed to give your property listings the best chance of selling above asking, all available through Agent Tech Finder.

1. Co-Libry

Product Name: Computer Vision for Real Estate

What the marketing says: Your images contain a lot of information. Extract untapped data and insights from your listing photos.

What Agent Tech Finder says: Belgian company Co-Libry is a PropTech company that truly innovates and solves real problems. Their computer vision product takes the hassle out of going through all listing images as it uses AI to automatically detect what is in each photo. In doing so it makes sure that the listing description doesn’t miss any searchable feature out (something that happens all too often) and can, if you choose, auto-generate a listing description based on what is detected in the photos

2. Showcase IDX

Product Name: Showcase IDX

What the marketing says: IDX home search is user friendly, mapping tools and real estate CRM tools power thousands of top producing agents.

What Agent Tech Finder says: A product which may have just become even more relevant for US realtors. If a brokerage is really serious about taking the plunge and leaving Zillow now that they have entered the brokerage arena, that brokerage website had better have some serious portal-like functionality and display listings from the MLS as well as they appear on Zillow. That’s exactly what this WordPress plugin does for brokerage websites.

3. Boxbrownie.com

Product Name: Day to Dusk

What the marketing says: Boxbrownie can turn any daytime or gloomy sky into a breathtaking sunset to really make your listing stand out from the rest.

What Agent Tech Finder says: The Australian company has made itself the gold standard for visual listing enhancements over the past few years. Their pricing is very reasonable (and crucially, pay as you go rather than contract-based), and their service is excellent.

4. Canva

Product Name: Canva

What the marketing says: Use Canva’s drag-and-drop feature and professional layouts to design consistently stunning graphics. Design presentations, social media graphics, and more with thousands of beautiful layouts.

What Agent Tech Finder says: Okay, so you may have heard of Canva. A lot of people use it to create their CVs or wedding invitations, but now an increasing number of agents are using Canva’s generic design platform to build marketing material, enhance listings and get the most out of their branding. We at Agent Tech Finder use it for a lot of what we do, and we love it.

5. Buffer 

Product Name: Buffer Publish

What the marketing says: Plan, collaborate, and publish thumb-stopping content that drives meaningful engagement and growth for your brand. Plan and publish your content for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn, all from one simple dashboard.

What Agent Tech Finder says: Another tool that we use and love here, Buffer makes social media simple. It connects with all your accounts and you can program posts and tag the right people and means you don’t have to wait around or go through multiple accounts to get the message out to your followers on different networks.

6. RTB House

Product Name: RTB House

What the marketing says: RTB House has built the first and only in the world ad buying engine powered entirely by Deep Learning algorithms, enabling advertisers to generate outstanding results and reach their short, mid and long-term goals.

What Agent Tech Finder says: Some very smart code behind ad buying and retargeting campaigns. As digital media, and especially re-targeting, become more and more relevant even for small independent brokers, this is the tech that really helps. They have offices around the world and charge on a cost per lead basis.

7. Starberry

Product Name: Starberry Branding

What the marketing says: Our 35-year heritage of focused brand development means we can create new brands for estate agents, property developments, proptech, property finance and conveyancing firms that are striking, memorable and inspiring. We’re skilled at refreshing your brand too, making your company relevant and competitive again.

What Agent Tech Finder says: We’re constantly reading industry pundits harping on about how agents need to focus on their branding. Starberry are some of the best in the business at working with agencies and brokerages to make sure that their branding is on point and reflects who they are as a company.

8. Real Geeks

Product Name: Facebook Marketing Tool

What the marketing says: Real Geeks offers an easy-to-use Facebook marketing tool for real estate agents and Realtors. Our tool has streamlined the process of creating ads within 3-5 minutes. It creates AMAZING looking ads that convert well and drive the user to your highly optimized landing pages.

What Agent Tech Finder says: Creating Facebook ads for your listings is invariably one of those tasks that takes far longer than you think. Unlike Google, Facebook ads can be very granular and targeted and paying to have the experts set everything up for you is almost certainly a good idea. Real Geeks are one of the best in the business, and they have a great blog too.

9. TrendGraphix

Product Name: TRENDSend

What the marketing says: TRENDSend turns Facts & Trends into a robust, online marketing campaign that will get you noticed.

What Agent Tech Finder says: A cool idea. Housing data is used by just about everyone as an excuse to communicate with potential customers these days. If, like us, you don’t have your own in-house data science team, this product will generate interesting insights from data from your local area and use it in your branded email marketing campaign.

These are just 9 marketing solutions for agents, brokers, and developers. To download Agent Tech Finder’s pdf of 35+1 solutions, click here.

Idealista has been on something of a roll with new product launches recently. Both their virtual home staging tool and their Idealista / Energy tool feature in our run-down of property portal features that we like. As millennials who hate picking up the phone, this tool also gets our seal of approval.

In the hour long webinar, industry expert Simon Baker discusses the current situation that marketplaces find themselves in before offering a structure by which companies can set themselves up to survive in the short term and thrive in the long term.

I had the privilege of sitting down with Georg Chmiel, the Executive Chairman of Juwai IQI to discuss his views on the impact of the Coronavirus Juwai IQI, how China is rebounding from the crisis, and how he sees the real estate market transforming as a result of the crisis.

Some of the key points to come out of the interview are:

• Properties can be transacted online using a range of products and tools that are available today

• All the infrastructure – from advertising to selling to fulfilment – that has been put in place over the last 10 years is now being used to facilitate online transactions 

• Sales volumes in China are 3 times the volume of those in February and higher than the same time last year 

• The impact of the Coronavirus on Juwai IQI has been minimized by moving swiftly and adopting new work practices 

• Online understand (and adoption) is mandatory for all agents in the market and the portal needs to provide more than just leads to agents – creating new opportunities

• All aspects of real estate sales and rentals have the opportunity to be improved through technology driven tools and this crisis is likely to be the accelerant of change

I hope you enjoy the Vodcast!

Now it seems that there may be more trouble on the horizon for the bay-area company as its listings providers move their properties from the short-term to the long-term markets. With any sort of travel strictly off the cards for the foreseeable future, reports are coming in that more long term rentals are coming to market in city centres traditionally dominated by holiday rentals. 

The Irish times reported yesterday that Irish #1 portal Daft.ie have seen an 83% jump in rentals available on the site in some of Dublin’s most trendy inner city neighbourhoods. The Irish market has been notoriously bereft of this kind of letting opportunity for years and this trend is not only confined to the capital, with Galway also reported as seeing a 40% increase compared to last year.

Spain’s population has been among the hardest hit in the COVID-19 epidemic. Yet in central neighbourhoods of Madrid the number of rental listings on leading portal idealista on Monday had increased by 10% according to a local paper.

As the truly essential takes precedence over the ‘nice to have’ all over the world, we may be seeing a shift away from property owners listing on vacation websites and instead choosing the long term option available through property portals.

“With online marketing becoming the preferred media over print and other forms of advertising, we saw an opportunity to create a specialized commercial and industrial property listing portal,” says Comproperty.co.za co-founder, Louise Gibson. “It also reduces the hassle and cost for those who don’t have big marketing budgets and increases the online presence of brokers who want to keep ahead in this very competitive market.”

Comproperty.co.za is not an estate agency and is not involved in any transactions between the various parties. It solely provides a central location for listing and browsing commercial and industrial properties.

“One of the most appealing aspects of the service,” says Gibson, “is that it’s so easy to use and all enquiries are directed straight to the broker or individual listing the property. Brokers who do not want to reveal the details of their exclusive listings can place adverts to attract and guage interest from potential clients.”

“Properties may be listed by agencies or private owners and because of it’s national reach, we anticipate that in the near future, Comproperty.co.za will become the first port of call for all businesses and investors looking for suitable premises,” Gibson continues.

Visitors to the site will be able to acquire a good feel and understanding of the market before making the all-important decision to lease, purchase or invest in suitable properties. They can also study area profiles of the different commercial hubs across the country and zoom in on the Google map facility to get a birds-eye view of where the properties are situated.

In addition, the website will include a distressed properties section giving browsers the opportunity to bid on a property and receive e-mail notifications if they have been outbid. The bid or offer is not legally binding, but rather an interactive option to purchase distressed properties at bargain prices.

Read more here.

Landis, a startup that uses technology to boost homeownership, has inked a deal with Transcendent Investment Management, a major owner of single-family rentals, to turn some of its tenants into buyers.

Through a strategic partnership, Transcendent’s tenants will be offered the option of purchasing their homes, the companies announced. “A lot of our tenants are ‘Try before you buy,’” said Adam Wolfson, chief investment officer of Florida-based Transcendent, which has purchased 6,000 single-family rentals around the Southeast to date. “The partnership with Landis will allow us to approach this more programmatically and with an established playbook.”

Founded in New York City in 2017 by Cyril Berdugo and Tom Petit, Landis helps tenants get their finances in shape and offers personalized coaching to get them ready to buy. That coaching includes tools and technology to help tenants track their progress. “You can think of it like Credit Karma for home ownership,” Petit said.

In some situations, Landis can also buy the home on the client’s behalf. The future homeowner can move in right away, and Landis collects rent for up to 12 months before the buyer purchases the home back from Landis. (Rental payments are put toward the down payment.)

According to Petit, Landis has secured $50 million in equity and debt to date. Most recently, it closed a $15 million debt financing in August, according to Crunchbase.

The genesis of the company, said Petit, was a desire to inject liquidity into a housing market where many renters are “stuck in a renting cycle.” Over the past few years, several companies have popped up seeking to boost homeownership.

“They’re the ones most in need of a new type of service, a new technology, because they’re the ones getting the least support,” he said. “Mortgage brokers turn them away, agents turn them away.”

According to its website, Landis generates a fee when it coaches clients through the process of getting a mortgage. When buyers purchase their homes back from Landis, they pay an extra 3 percent of the appraised value at the time of Landis’ purchase.

But by using Landis, Petit said owners can also avoid paying a brokerage fee. For tenants, it’s a solution if you can’t get a mortgage. “Our goal is to get you a mortgage as soon as possible,” he said. “We’re mission-driven when it comes to that.”

The deal with Transcendent will help accelerate Landis’ growth. Currently, Landis operates in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and West Virginia. It is focused on the starter-home market, and will purchase homes for clients that are priced between $75,000 and $400,000.

“Immediately having access to so many clients and being able to multiply our impact with a partnership with a major landlord is something we’re excited about,” Petit said.

Over the past few years, investors like Blackstone Group and Starwood Capital Group have pumped billions of dollars into the single-family rental market.

Aventura, Fla.-based Transcendent, founded by CEO Jordan Kavana, has been acquiring single-family homes in the Southeast since 2008. To date, it has purchased 6,000 single-family homes, and it plans to invest another $1 billion over the next three to five years.

“We’ve been selling to our tenants occasionally,” said Adam Wolfson, Transcendent’s chief investment officer, who said the appeal of working with Landis was a programmatic approach to selling homes. “A lot of our tenants are ‘try before they buy,’” he said. “Certain assets we choose to sell anyway at the end of a hold period. There’s operational efficiency in that to sell to the tenant.”

Read more here.

MyDesktop is the leading sales customer relationship management (“CRM”) software for Australian and New Zealand real estate agents. It is used by approximately 30 percent of the market, well ahead of the second-place player.

The Vault Group, established by the original founders of MyDesktop, is a leading provider of the next generation of sales CRM, property management and commercial real estate software for Australian and New Zealand real estate agents. 

These operations will be merged to provide MyDesktop customers with a seamless transition to Australia’s and New Zealand’s next generation CRM platform with access to inbuilt property management and commercial real estate functionality.  

The combination of MyDesktop and Vault will transform the Real Estate Investar Group into a profitable high growth PropTech company.

Joe Hanna, the Executive Director of Real Estate Investar Group, commented: “We are excited bringing together Australia and New Zealand’s largest CRM system with the next generation of software to provide all real estate agents with a long term, market leading range of residential and commercial sales and property management software.

 

“Scott Wulf and his team, the founders of the Vault Group, have intimate knowledge of the MyDesktop systems and will be responsible for the merger of the two companies.”

Simon Baker, Chairman of Real Estate Investar Group, commented: “Over the last 12 months, the leadership team, headed by Joe Hanna, has explored numerous acquisition opportunities. The purchase of Real Estate CRM, and thus MyDesktop and Vault, is a transformational moment for the REV Group and establishes it as a serious and profitable PropTech player in the Australian market.

 

“Real Estate Investar is now well positioned to explore additional acquisition and investment opportunities.” 

Real Estate Investar has been suspended from trading on the ASX until the transactions have been finalised and the company re-complies with Chapters 1 and 2 of the ASX Listing Rules.