Real estate brokerage and franchise giant Realogy has selected 16 early-stage startups to come to its headquarters next month and compete in person for a $25,000 grand prize at the firm’s second annual FWD Innovation Summit.
The startups, selected from approximately 100 applicants, will make their pitches on June 17 at Realogy’s headquarters in Madison, New Jersey.
Realogy Franchise Group President and CEO Alex Perriello talks with Inman News founder and Publisher Brad Inman about how companies can partner with Realogy.
“The FWD Innovation Summit allows us the opportunity to engage with some of the brightest minds who are focused on technology solutions designed for the real estate industry,” said Alex Perriello, president and CEO of the Realogy Franchise Group, in a statement.
This year’s FWD companies include:
- Beamly from BrightDoor: A micro-location marketing solution for real estate, Beamly can push personalized content to buyers’ mobile devices as they move through a community, home or specific rooms in a home. (Cary, North Carolina)
- Closing Time: Closing Time helps real estate agents guide homebuyers through the buying and closing process with an organized checklist of tasks and deliverables customized to each buyer’s unique situation and specific state closing laws and procedures. (San Francisco)
- CO Everywhere: CO Everywhere allows users to connect to real-time, unfiltered local photos, geographic information and social activity anywhere they want by drawing on a map. (Boston)
- Curb Call: Curb Call is a mobile app that coordinates on-demand home showings between buyers and nearby agents in real time. (San Diego)
- Deductr: Deductr automates tracking of expenses, mileage and time, and provides single-click access to everything independent agents need to itemize and maximize their tax deductions. (Orem, Utah)
- FLIPT: FLIPT provides visual search for top investment properties, highlighting unique insights about home values and investment potential, and connects consumers with local agents. (Seattle)
- GoConnect: GoConnect is a free checklist mobile app for real estate agents, created by real estate agents. (Cary, North Carolina)
- Househappy: Househappy is a visual real estate search engine that offers consumers an intuitive way to search homes for sale, and brokers and agents a free platform on which to advertise their properties. (Portland, Oregon)
- KISI: KISI is a keyless entry system that allows tenants and visitors to access their space more conveniently using their smartphones. (Brooklyn, New York)
- Lasso: Lasso enables collaborative home search between agents and buyers from multiple websites. (San Francisco)
- Matterport: Matterport enables rapid, high-quality 3-D visualization of physical spaces from a professional camera or a mobile phone. (Mountain View, California)
- Remotely: Remotely provides home automation for the rental and real estate industry. Residents, agents and owners can control their locks, thermostats, lights and other appliances with their smartphones from anywhere in the world. (Denver)
- Retsly: Retsly aggregates and enhances multiple listing service data and implements a cohesive real-time application programming interface (API) as well as an open-source software development kit (SDK) for developing data-driven real estate products. (Vancouver)
- Slidebureau: Slidebureau is a professional tool and template design service for creating polished real estate presentations and slideshows. (Seattle)
- SmartExpose: SmartExpose makes Web, tablet and smartphone apps that can be white-labeled for real estate agents and property developers. (Berlin)
- Zumper: Zumper is a national rental search site. Landlords and agents use the Zumper Pro mobile app to create and post listings to top search sites and manage leads on their phone. (San Francisco)
Realogy owns the nation’s largest brokerage, NRT LLC, and franchise brands Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, Century 21, Coldwell Banker, ERA,and Sotheby’s International Realty. All of those companies are participating in FWD, along with Realogy’s relocation division, Cartus, and its title and settlement services business, Title Resource Group.
In this promotional video, Realogy Franchise Group President and CEO Alex Perriello talks about the origins of the FWD Innovation Summit.
Last year, 15 firms presented their technology at the inaugural Realogy FWD event. Floored, a New York City-based startup that makes interactive 3-D models of homes, won last year’s grand prize. HomeZada, which helps homeowners organize and manage their homes, and BuyerMLS, a real-time buyer marketplace for agents, were named second and third place, respectively.
Two of this year’s FWD companies participated in the “hackathon” Realogy hosted during the National Association of Realtors’ national convention in San Francisco in November. Retsly helped coordinate the event and powered the tech platform behind it. Curb Call was one of the finalists of that event.