Keller Williams closed $93.5 billion in sales transactions between July and September, tallying a 4.2-percent year-over-year increase while aggressively doubling down on its suite of proprietary artificial intelligence tools, according to third-quarter results announced Tuesday.
Agents for the privately owned, Texas-based real estate franchise inked 306,243 deals in the third quarter, up 1.9 percent from the previous quarter while taking on 195,813 new listings during the same period, a 4.4 percent increase from the previous year despite historically low inventory, according to the results.
In total, Keller Williams surpassed 190,000 associates in the third quarter, a year-over-year increase of 3,396 agents across the globe.
John Davis, Keller Williams’ CEO and president | Credit Keller Williams
“Our people are focused on competing like never before,” Keller Williams President and CEO John Davis said in a statement released Tuesday morning. “They are leveraging our technology to continue to outperform the market and take more territory, even in the midst of the market shift we’re now seeing.”
Chief among the company’s tech offerings, Kelle, the proprietary AI-powered real estate platform, continued to gain steam, adding 60,228 new agent downloads during the third quarter — double the number who had previously used the tool.
Kelle Market Snaps, which allows agents using Kelle to pull market reports with a voice or text command, also soared between July and September, netting 561,219 new Market Snaps in the third quarter alone, according to the results.
Earlier in the third quarter, the company acquired tech startup Smarter Agent to expedite the development of its consumer-facing real estate app – which it plans to launch in the first quarter of 2019. It also announced partnerships with artificial intelligence companies KUNGFU.AI and CognitiveScale to equip its Keller Cloud platform with AI capabilities.
In early 2019, Keller Williams will be releasing a new AI-based tool within KWCommand, the company’s proprietary customer relationship management tool. Agents will be able to calculate the odds of their clients offer being accepted and how changing the offer increases or decreases the chances.
The application is currently being tested by Keller Williams agents within KW Labs, the innovation hub of Keller Williams.
“Our third quarter has been historic,” Davis said. “We released a new skill, Market Snaps, which has provided incredible agent and consumer value through Kelle, our AI-based personal real estate assistant. We also announced the key strategic acquisition of Smarter Agent and two key tech partnerships that are keeping us moving along our technology roadmap and consumer strategy.”
Keller Williams Chief Product Officer Neil Dholakia said the company’s escalating scale will allow it to have the best AI tools in the marketplace. He said the company plans to open its Smart Cloud application programming interfaces to outside developers to build on Keller Williams’ agent-focused technology.
“The long-term vision is for Keller Williams to provide the buy-side consumer journey, the sell-side consumer journey and the property ownership consumer journey end-to-end,” Dholakia said. “We want to provide everything from search to refinement of that search, to how do I get a mortgage, to how do I get insurance, how do I get a title – everything we want to happen within our platform.”
Neil Dholakia, Keller Williams’ chief product officer | Credit: Keller Williams
“If that means integrating with other companies and enabling at the API level so that we still maintain the interface for the agent to the consumer, we’ll do that as well,” Dholakia added. “Our ultimate strategy, if I had to sum it up is, we want to create a consumer experience that wraps around an agent that allows the agent to concierge that experience and be there every step of the way through selling a home, buying a home and owning a home.”
Keller Williams also celebrated the success of its growth initiative, which launched in 2011 with a significant milestone. Since starting the initiative, a business leadership program that Keller Williams says gives leadership teams unique systems, models, and tools to generate predictable and sustainable growth in market share and profitability, Keller Williams has grown by 100,000 associates.
The initiative is the focal point of Keller Williams’ leadership training with weekly companywide coaching calls from Davis.
“We are so proud of our agents, market centers and leadership for the 100,000 new Keller Williams family members added since the growth initiative’s start in 2011 – and, we’re only getting started,” Davis said. “This level of growth contributes to our culture of sharing and plays a big role in fueling our technology investment.”
