Some 90% of consumers say they will use a real estate agent for their next transaction. Only 41% actually use the same agent that they used the last time. Client retention is vital to building a market-proof real estate practice. And, that’s what Inside Real Estate aims to do with its new CORE Home product, a consumer destination, branded completely to the brokerage and agent.
According to Inside Real Estate, the product “anchors consumers in a single place, allowing brokerages to deliver a seamlessly connected experience throughout the entire homeownership lifecycle: from living in a home and understanding its value, searching for their next home, streamlining the complexities of a current transaction, moving into a new home and back to living in their current home.”
CORE Home will be available via mobile web, allowing all kvCORE Platform customers to provide this experience to their clients. Brokerages will also have options for a fully branded, custom mobile app. Inside Real Estate’s investment in this groundbreaking, consumer-facing technology enhances the value that brokerages and their agents deliver to consumers, creating coveted lifetime relationships that leap-frog the generic experiences available today from large portal players.
“As a brokerage partner, we knew that to really do this the right way, we had to have the brokerage tech stack in a place where we could build upon,” says Joe Skousen, CEO at Inside Real Estate. “There are big players and big dollars coming into this space. They’re all playing for the consumer.”
And, it makes sense. In today’s industry, consumers are driving innovation and asking for a streamlined consumer experience. “For the brokerages, we think that in the future, they have to have a solution like this for their clients,” says Skousen.
Inside Real Estate began building the homeownership solution 18 months ago as a partner product to kvCORE, its flagship platform. CORE Home was built with the brokerage and agent front and center. The product is designed to keep them top of mind with consumers, increase repeat and referral business, and ensure they stay at the center of the real estate transaction. Future extensions to CORE Home will help brokerages increase profitability through the monetization of affiliated services.
“When you look at brokerage dollar, brokers aren’t doing enough transactions, and they’re paying way too much to not do them,” says Skousen. “Brokers struggle to offer modern value not just to consumers, but to the agents too. And CORE Home is a way orient your business as a lifetime, client business.”
CORE Home is branded entirely to the brokerage and reinforces an exclusive agent relationship with every consumer interaction. CORE Home allows brokerages and their agents to deliver a modern, tech-enabled experience that engages consumers throughout their homeownership journey, including these four cyclical components:
- Current Home: Helps consumers understand and manage their greatest asset with real-time alerts around home value and detailed local market data, along with visibility into their mortgage and insurance information, trends, and opportunities to ensure they have the most competitive rates available. Brokerages and agents stay top of mind as a vital information source versus the homeowner going to Zillow or other sources every day.
- Next Home: Empowers Brokers and their teams and agents with a portal-grade search and discovery experience, tailored to the client’s life. From exploring their next move with an advanced search experience to insights designed to engage and “delight” with personalized results that evolve based on consumer behavior. Homeowners can use tools to understand how much they can afford for their next home and get pre-qualified for a purchase. Brokerages and agents can finally provide a modern search experience that beats the large portals, and become the first to know when a consumer starts shopping for their next home.
- Buy & Sell: For Brokers and Agents with integrated services, active home buyers and sellers get the convenience of monitoring their entire transaction in one place, with tracking every step of the way including contingency removals, home inspection, appraisal, mortgage status, title, and more. Brokerages and agents benefit by being the provider of this modern, simplified experience that buyers and sellers have dreamed about for decades.
- Move: Once the transaction is complete, homebuyers and sellers can tap into the help they need with moving companies, home improvement companies, and services all within the same app they’ve used to manage their home and transactions. Brokerages and agents build lasting client relationships with the all-encompassing, tech-driven app that gives homeowners instant and trusted access to everything they need to manage their move now, and their home forever.
