The pandemic has modified the best way the world communicates, from distant work Zoom conferences to social media. It’s additionally affected the effectivity wherein many industries function, together with actual property. To higher improve the best way brokers promote themselves and their properties, Bravo’s Million Greenback Itemizing alum and founding father of Douglas Elliman’s top-producing brokerage, The Eklund | Gomes Staff, Fredrik Eklund not too long ago co-founded new social actual property app REAL alongside entrepreneur Thomas Ma.
Fredrik Eklund
REAL is a social app for actual property that fuses an Instagram-style platform with WhatsApp-style chat skills that permits brokers to advertise themselves without spending a dime and create one other stream of income. Thus, it permits brokers to take higher management of their enterprise. How REAL works is that brokers and shoppers create profiles and curate their feed of listings. Sellers, consumers, and different brokers can observe one another to get a extra in-depth sense of the agent’s choices, character, and magnificence that they may not get from an commercial. Not solely would possibly this improve an agent’s income, however shoppers are additionally capable of finding their supreme agent that focuses on a sure area, value level, and ore. The brokers are in a position to curate their featured photos, content material, and chat matters that greatest mirror their private information and expertise. The app additionally includes a vary of value factors for house gross sales.
The REAL app enhances brokers’ companies with a devoted social platform for actual property.
“These in the true property trade use conventional social media to market properties, which has been a pattern for years and years,” Eklund tells Forbes. “With Covid-19, nonetheless, every thing moved into the palms of our fingers. With so many properties being offered by way of WhatsApp and over FaceTime, this app permits you to scroll by means of one thing very lovely and aspirational, but additionally curated to your wants. With Instagram, Fb, and, after all, TikTok, turning into video platforms in a short time, this app is completely developed for actual property brokers on one hand and shoppers, like consumers and sellers, on the opposite. I name our app, REAL, a mixture of Zillow, WhatsApp, and Instagram.”
With house gross sales shifting so rapidly, the app permits individuals to speak in real-time and instantly get in touch with an agent by way of the chat functionality to obtain rapid details about sure listings. Not simply that, however brokers are additionally in a position to promote properties not but in the marketplace. Sellers and consumers can observe and work together with a number of brokers without delay, whether or not they’re shopping for a property or itemizing one. The high-speed accessibility of the app additionally makes the consumer expertise seamless and environment friendly.
The free app makes use of superior AI expertise to conduct particular searches tailor-made to a selected want. Individuals can carry out very detailed searches, whether or not they wish to take a look at kitchens or dwelling rooms, or are on the lookout for particular house facilities like a health club, house workplace, or swimming pool. The app then will tailor your content material to what you’re on the lookout for.
The app makes it simple to message many brokers without delay to seek out the proper match.
Brokers can even talk straight with one another at lightning velocity to maneuver transactions alongside and share info. The Eklund | Gomes Staff, which has 92 brokers in 5 states, makes use of the app’s chat capabilities over textual content so info received’t get misplaced.
Eklund partnered with Hong Kong-based Ma, a licensed actual property agent and profitable entrepreneur, to handle the present issues in the true property market, which incorporates brokers paying an excessive amount of to promote their properties, extreme follow-ups from shoppers, gradual response occasions, ineffective chilly calling, and a lot extra.
“Brokers are getting licensed in many various states and there’s an entire crossover taking place, particularly within the luxurious market,” he says. “Present actual property apps, like Zillow, don’t present fast solutions and MLSs are gradual. I run a big group and see all sides of the market, in all value factors, and the way rapidly it strikes. Individuals wish to use their cellphones for this, they need it to be enjoyable, they usually need it to be FAST. On the identical time, they see what individuals round them like and take a look at.”
Brokers can simply create a greater income stream by means of the true estate-focused app.
He says that brokers should pay websites like Zillow to have their listings featured, and people platforms in the end retain management over what their itemizing appears to be like like on-line. This app permits brokers to submit their listings without spending a dime and management the aesthetic of their web page. It additionally permits brokers to place themselves as a frontrunner of their market. For instance, Eklund not too long ago opened a brokerage in Stockholm, and his brokers are utilizing the app to advertise their properties and turn into an envoy in that metropolis.
“With so many properties being offered by way of WhatsApp and over FaceTime, this app permits you to scroll by means of one thing very lovely and aspirational, but additionally curated to your wants,” he says. “You need to use the capabilities of the app to seek out your own home, or simply sit there and dream away such as you’d take a look at an exquisite journal that includes essentially the most lovely actual property.”
The worldwide app could be downloaded in several languages and in any metropolis or city. Since its comfortable launch 11 months in the past, there are over 147,500 downloads and is continuous to develop. He says that not like Instagram, REAL is a real income stream, which he hopes will in the end entice actual property brokers to undertake the app into their enterprise.
