Some homeowners thinking about selling may need a little push to actually list their home. “Sold Alerts,” a new feature of Move Inc.’s Market Snapshot tool, provides agents multiple listing service-sourced real-time alerts when a home sells near a prospective seller’s home, giving them the opportunity to give a potential listing client that nudge.
“Having a Sold Alert pop up can be the trigger a real estate agent needs to contact a prospective home seller and, if the time is right, list their home,” said Michael Kane, Move’s senior vice president of software as a service businesses, in a statement.
Market Snapshot is a tool within Move’s customer relationship management platform, Top Producer Systems, that sends out branded local market trends reports to consumers on behalf of agents. Another recent addition to Market Snapshot are real-time, MLS-sourced alerts for new listings and price reductions of homes in neighborhoods that agents know their clients or potential clients are interested in.
Market Snapshot is currently available to users in more than 350 markets, covering approximately 85 percent of the listings in the U.S., a Move spokeswoman said.
In this low-inventory market where sellers are at a premium, real estate tech companies are developing tools like Sold Alerts to help agents drum up listings.
Last summer, tech-focused brokerage and referral firm ZipRealty Inc. launched a “Seller Center” that provides property value estimates and a tool for identifying comparable sales, with the ability to put sellers in touch with an agent who can help them refine their asking price and develop a marketing strategy.
In February, Trulia launched Seller Ads — a product it developed in conjunction with its relatively new software wing Market Leader — that allows agents to brand home value reports consumers request from Trulia.
Zillow offers users, including real estate agents, the ability to set up email alerts when for-sale-by-owner homes come on the market in a city or ZIP codes they’re interested in, or when homeowners set a “Make Me Move” price.
Other firms like Benutech Inc. and SmartZip Analytics Inc. are leveraging big data to help agents pinpoint which homeowners might be more ready to sell than their neighbors, giving them an opportunity to focus their marketing efforts.
