Real estate technology vendor Smarter Agent is reportedly shutting down its popular mobile application platform that allows brokers and agents to create branded real estate search apps, Inman has learned. The company has been owned by real estate franchisor Keller Williams since 2018.
“Earlier this week, Keller Williams-owned Smarter Agent announced a plan to discontinue its dedicated Smarter Agent app,” Darryl Frost, a spokesperson for Keller Williams, told Inman. “Smarter Agent will continue to service existing client agreements through their expiration.”
“Smarter Agent users have been notified of the planned service changes.”
In an email to clients obtained by Inman, Smarter Agent confirms it will continue to honor client contracts until the agreement in place ends, at which time the agreement will expire and services will end.
Keller Williams acquired a controlling stake in the Philadelphia-based mobile application company in 2018, with the goal of building an end-to-end platform and completely revamped consumer search. At the time of the acquisition — which was to fuel the creation of that platform — Keller Williams added a team of 31 mobile developers with deep experience in consumer search.
The company released its long-discussed consumer search app and also a revamped, neighborhood-centric home search website in early 2020, as part of a total consumer experience facelift.
Smarter Agent, which was founded more than decade ago by brothers Brad and Eric Blumberg in Philadelphia, boasted on its website that it counted approximately 25 percent of the real estate industry among its clients.
That includes more than 3,000 brokerages and 300,000 agents, according to the company. If those numbers are accurate, the end of the platform would create a chasm in the real estate industry when it comes to mobile application services.
It’s not clear, however, how many of those clients are affiliated with Keller Williams. At the time of the acquisition in 2018, Keller Williams president Josh Team told Inman that Keller Williams was Smarter Agent’s biggest client.
Keller Williams declined to disclose how many clients Smarter Agent had, at the time of the decision to shutter the platform.
The phase-out of a popular real estate tech vendor post-acquisition isn’t a new phenomenon for the real estate industry.
In late 2019, for example, customers expressed frustration over the lack of support that Compass was providing its existing clients of the customer relationship management tool Contactually.
