RESAAS, the social network designed to facilitate agent-to-agent referrals, says 300,000 licensed real estate agents, broker-owners or employees at franchisors or real estate associations are using the company’s Facebook-like communication platform.
The milestone “shows the appetite for a vertical-specific platform, exclusive to real estate professionals,” said Tom Rossiter, president of RESAAS, in a statement. “Agent-to-agent collaboration is long overdue for a digital revolution of the industry, and RESAAS is helping its members take the lead in this transformation.”
Vancouver-based RESAAS Services Inc. released RESAAS out of beta in early 2013 and began growing its membership quickly by offering to power free private social networks for brokerages, real estate associations and organizations (see agent Michele Chiu’s profile page).
When real estate firms sign on, all of their agents and employees join the larger RESAAS network. Re/Max, the large global franchisor, has been one of the largest firms to sign on RESAAS to date. RESAAS began powering a global multilanguage, multicurrency referral network for global franchise giant Re/Max in March.
Marketing video RESAAS released in November 2013 featuring testimonials from high-profile real estate professionals.
Other notable groups who have signed up with the network include large Canadian brokerage Sutton West Coast Realty, the Asian Real Estate Association of America (AREAA) and Council of Residential Specialists, the largest affiliate of the National Association of Realtors.
RESAAS supports 13 languages, but 90 percent of its members hail from the U.S. and Canada. In 2015, RESAAS will smooth one barrier to international referrals through its network. It’s currently developing a real-time translation feature for user-generated content and agent-t0-agent private messages, the network’s vice president of communications, Danielle Sissons, told Inman.
Though it’s currently geared primarily to real estate pros who post info about their listings and professional activity, the network’s long-term trajectory includes consumers, RESAAS founder and CEO Cory Brandolini told Inman for a feature earlier this year.
After gaining a critical mass of agents, consumers, who currently can view profiles and pages but can’t “like” or comment on posts, will be able to find insightful real estate information in locations they’re interested in, Brandolini said.
RESAAS rolled out its first revenue-generating product, AdSAAS, in May, which allows businesses to advertise to RESAAS members with ads that show up in the network’s feed much like ads on Facebook do.
In October, RESAAS introduced a marketplace that gives real estate tech vendors an introduction to its membership. Marketplace vendors who generate business through RESAAS agree to pay the firm a referral fee.