In The News — Zillow Enters the iBuyer Wars
In The News rounds up the most important PropTech headlines from the last week and serves it to you with a side of insight and opinion. Hit us up on Twitter with your feedback!
Top Stories:
Zillow Enters New Enterprise: Offers to Buy and Sell Homes
The biggest news from last week came from industry giants Zillow who have pivoted their business model and move in the direction of buying and selling homes using local real estate agents who are members of Zillow’s Premier Agent program.
These agents will be representing Zillow in the purchase and re-sale of homes, placing Zillow in a competitive bracket with iBuyers such as Opendoor and OfferPad, among others.
This move builds upon a foundation Zillow laid with their integration of it’s Instant Offers program which allows prospective sellers to receive cash offers from a select group of private investors along with a side-by-side comparative market analysis (CMA) from a local Zillow Premier Agent.
Redfin and Compass Top Swanepoel Mega 1000 Rankings
According to a newly established ranked list by Stefan Swanepoel and t360, Redfin and Compass are now considered among the top 10 largest real estate brokerages in the US, according to the inaugural Swanepoel Mega 1000 rankings to be released in full at some point this week.
The purpose of these rankings is to position and highlight the industry’s best brokerages by performance, which makes the rankings of Redfin and Compass affirmative to the idea of iBuyers and the new breed of technology driven brokerages.
The full top-10 can be seen below:
Quick Hits:
Katerra Merger
Katerra, a construction tech firm that impressively raised $865M in their last investment round led by SoftBank, has announced that they are merging with Fields Construction Company.
Fields is a construction management firm in the Northeast, and this strategic partnership will allow Katerra to enter new markets and expedite the construction process entirely. Katerra currently has a valuation of above $3 billion.
Forbes & Real Estate Transactions
Forbes published a great piece last week entitled “15 Things to Consider Before Closing a Real Estate Transaction”. Our own CEO Joshua Fraser offered some insight on ongoing carrying costs:
“Most investors only calculate purchase and repair costs while overlooking the additional carrying and closing costs. These additional costs can often accumulate to approximately 10–20% of the entire budget, which will decrease the profit margins. Ensure your financial audit of the property includes these.”
Read the full piece here.
Re/Max has a mammoth sized Q1
Re/Max Holdings, Inc. has seen record growth generating 52.6 million in revenue in their first quarter of the year. This is an 11% increase from their position last year, and their total agent count has increased to 120,821 agents in total.
Re/Max chalks their growth up to revenue from their newly re-tooled annual agent conference, the aforementioned increase in agents, and the hot market for homes.
Read more here.
ICYMI:
Smart Cities Part One
“While cities are growing in sheer size and bustling with people, even more so, they are becoming brim filled with devices that can receive and transmit data. This includes everything from phones, tablets and laptops, but also public objects that are fixtures in cityscapes such as traffic lights, lamp posts and garbage bins. Through the sensors and transmitters in these objects, smart cities will be able to locate people, know what they are doing, and who they are with.”
The Future of Property Reports is Now
“With a homebuyer report you’ll know more about the home you’re purchasing, giving you a competitive edge to negotiate for the best price and terms — and just as importantly — spot any red flags before it’s too late. That’s why more and more home buyers throughout the U.S. are going online to do their own research by obtaining in-depth, customized home buying reports, rather than relying on a real estate agent pulling data off of the MLS to do it for them.”
For more insight on #PropTech, data use-cases, and guides on home-buying/investing, check out our blog here.
