The fast-growing real estate social network RESAAS has signed an agreement to power a global referral network for franchisor Re/Max and the more than 90,000 agents affiliated with the brand.
The RESAAS-powered platform will translate listings and communication between Re/Max agents in 28 languages, 44 currencies, and multiple units of measurement across the 6,000 offices and more than 90 countries where the world’s largest franchisor operates.
The network, which will be branded to Re/Max, is currently live in Spanish and English and will add the 26 other languages over approximately the next month, RESAAS President Tom Rossiter told Inman News.
“We are pleased to begin using RESAAS to offer an efficient means to increase referrals for our many different regions and to better communicate internally,” said Larry Oberly, vice president of global franchise and business solutions at Re/Max, in a statement.
In addition to accessing Re/Max-only feeds — broken down initially into Re/Max-wide, country and office groups — on the RESAAS-powered network, Re/Max agents will be automatically made members of the RESAAS platform, a Facebook-like social media network built exclusively for agents, RESAAS founder and CEO Cory Brandolini told Inman News.
Onboarding Re/Max’s large base of agent affiliates also gives Vancouver-based RESAAS a jolt to its platform, lending the fledgling network some credibility and helping it take a big step to reaching the critical mass of agent users it hopes will establish the platform as a useful social network.
Both agents and consumers can view RESAAS content, but only agents can participate by having profiles, sharing content and commenting on or “liking” posts.
In an effort to add agents to its network, RESAAS began powering private networks for other firms, Brandolini said, but Re/Max is by far the largest to sign on so far.
Using the private-network strategy, RESAAS went on a growth spurt in 2013, signing up groups like Canadian-based brokerage, Sutton West Coast Realty; Orange County, Calif.-based The Boutique Real Estate Group; the Asian Real Estate Association of America (AREAA); and the Fox Valley (Ill.) Association of Realtors.
After generating enough agent users, Brandolini envisions the network, which launched in 2009 and went public in 2011, will become more useful to consumers, describing RESAAS as a business-to-business-to-consumer platform.
Eventually, Brandolini envisions that consumers will be able to access the RESAAS platform to find information about listings and agents from a real estate pro’s perspective in many markets across the U.S. and overseas.
RESAAS, which has collected no revenue in its five-year life, plans to generate revenue from two sources, Brandolini told Inman News. The firm will begin rolling out premium features that agents can purchase on an a la carte basis in late spring, and will eventually begin selling display ads.
Re/Max is not alone in building a global referral network.
Real estate giant Realogy signed a contract with listing translation and hosting service Immobel in late 2012 to build global, multilingual lingual sites for its brands. In September, Century 21 Real Estate became the first Realogy brand to roll out the Immobel-powered global site.
