While real estate agents chase leads and close deals on houses, there’s another level of deal-making that takes place within the real estate industry: mergers, acquisitions, integrations and partnerships.
We’ll be recapping every week’s noteworthy deals that didn’t make it into print (and some that did) for your perusal.
We missed you last week!
June 19
Engel & Völkers announced a new real estate shop location in the prime Beaver Creek market, strengthening its existing Colorado presence. The new brokerage is led by license partners Josh Lautenberg and Tyra Rudrud along with managing broker Kristina Bruce and Mike Seguin, both formerly of High Life Properties. Engel & Völkers Vail Beaver Creek will serve the markets of Beaver Creek, Bachelor Gulch and Arrowhead, working in tandem with the Engel & Völkers Vail location to service the entirety of the Vail Valley.
June 20
Intero Real Estate Services, a San Francisco Bay Area brokerage owned by Berkshire Hathaway Home Services, recently added the widget Kukun to its property search site with the aim of curing buyers of “Renophobia,” the company announced. Kukun makes estimates of the cost and return on investment of renovation projects available on listings. “The Kukun solution not only offers the cost but the equity you can build and also the list of contractors that the neighbors have used so you can vet them,” said Derek Overbey, director of innovation at Intero Real Estate Services.
Homes.com has announced that UtahRealEstate.com, Utah’s largest Multiple Listing Service, will join Homes.com’s MLS Partnership Program. The new partnership will offer UtahRealEstate.com’s 14,000 members and over 17,000 listings free exposure to Homes.com’s audience of more than 14 million monthly transaction-ready consumers. Homes.com will also provide UtahRealEstate.com members access to the Homes.com Connect Lead System.
June 21
Birmingham-based Lake Homes Realty announced it is now licensed and operating as a real estate brokerage in New York and Connecticut. This expands the company’s brokerage operations footprint to 13 states.
Leading Real Estate Companies of the World has selected Clareity as a preferred provider through its Solutions Group program, which identifies business resources for its global community of 565 residential real estate firms. “While many of our members utilize Clareity’s services through their MLSs, we are excited to introduce them to DASH, their full-service platform for brokers,” said Robin LaSure, LeadingRE vice president, corporate marketing. “This platform gives our brokers a convenient way to support their agents through a secure mobile-friendly dashboard that centralizes applications and streamlines communications.”
This week’s deals
June 26
T3 Sixty is offering the T3 MLS Workshop to help MLSs learn about their consolidation options. It will be held on Tuesday, September 12, the day before the 2017 Council of Multiple Listing Services (CMLS) conference, at the JW Marriott in Austin. This one-day workshop is not part of the conference but hosted separately in association with CMLS. The T3 MLS Workshop will cover T3 MLS’s 7-step consolidation roadmap and provide best practices based on over 50 previously handled consolidations. It is custom-designed for chief executives of Realtor associations and MLSs, Presidents/President-Elects, MLS Chairs and MLS Directors. Attendance is limited to only 50 MLS organizations and will be on a first-come, first-serve basis. Register now at www.t3mls.com/register.
Armed with an additional $13.5 million in funding, Pillow, a short-term rental management service, has released a platform to help landlords and tenants walk the line — while milking units for extra cash. Pillow Residential lets apartment-building owners either directly rent out vacant units on a temporary basis or provide a controlled environment under which their tenants can do the same. The service essentially allows landlords to add an amenity to their buildings — permission and support for tenants to rent out their units short term — while wringing more cash from their inventory.
June 27
BrokerSumo, a leading back office, commission management and accounting platform for real estate brokerages and agent teams, announced a new integration partnership with SkySlope. The partnership brings together SkySlope, an industry leading transaction management platform, with BrokerSumo to make the process of managing and closing out transactions simple. The integration allows BrokerSumo customers to pull their SkySlope transactions seamlessly into BrokerSumo, eliminating double entry of data, the potential for human errors when entering data and making the contract to close process more efficient.
June 28
Homebuilders that advertise with Zillow Group can now get deeper insight into homebuyer preferences and housing supply to figure out where to break ground next. Housing analysis tools and data have been baked into Zillow Group’s platform for homebuilder advertisers that market listings on Zillow and Trulia. Drawing on homebuyer search activity, “as well as Zillow Group’s unique economic insights,” the feature allows homebuilders to see data such as how often Zillow users are searching and favoriting certain home types by ZIP code.
June 29
ShowingTime, the residential real estate industry’s leading showing management and market stats technology provider, announced that Triangle MLS, Inc. (TMLS), a regional multiple listing service covering 16 counties in the greater Triangle region of North Carolina, selected the ShowingTime Appointment Center to equip its 11,000 subscribers to manage showings. The ShowingTime offering will enable TMLS subscribers to call the ShowingTime Appointment Center 24/7/365 or schedule showings online through their MLS system, the ShowingTime mobile app or through other technology platforms selected by TMLS.
Email deals and partnerships information to press@inman.com.