With a growing user base and mission to keep agents working, UnlockdBox lets you share the hustle: Tech Review

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UnlockdBox is an app that helps agents outsource work to other agents and, vice versa, provides a side job for willing, usually newer, agents. 

Platforms: Mobile for iOS, Android
Ideal for: New agents, top producers, teams

Top selling points:

• Developed by working agent
• Clean, purpose-driven user interface
• Vendor marketplace
• Encourages agent cooperation
• Tight workflow design
• Flexibility of use

Top concern:

A single-purpose app such as this may get lost in the larger comprehensive platforms many agents are subject to these days. If its use is encouraged, it could thrive. Also, a safety mechanism would be a nice touch on this app, given that it encourages agents to possibly visit new places and meet with previously unmet clients or leads.

This article was updated on May 10, 2022.

What you should know

UnlockdBox is an app that lets agents outsource business tasks to other agents. It’s an ideal way for inexperienced agents or those new to a market to get to know colleagues, network, learn their market and get a feel for all the little things that go into building a real estate career. It also has a vendor marketplace for preferred and regularly used business partners to be promoted as they relate to assigned tasks.

Agents need to do more to help each other. For starters, the threat of competition is overblown, a concept the agent-founder of UnlockdBox espoused in our demo.

If your value isn’t enough to sustain interaction with another agent, or so tenuous that you can’t outsource basics such as open house attendance or the occasional showing, then maybe you don’t quite grasp the agency business model.

That’s what I like about this app, it adds value to the marketplace by spreading around work. It can help top producers offload work that’s below their pay grade while helping new agents and aspirational assistants (where laws allow) learn their market, meet clients and otherwise gain valuable field experience.

The app is purpose-driven, meaning its user experience cleanly reflects the app’s reason for being. There isn’t any interference from weightless, ancillary features or design miscues, a noteworthy step for a founder not versed in app design and development.

In essence, agents use UnlockdBox to create, accept and manage any number of critical daily business tasks, ranging from sitting at an open house, posting a sign, picking up marketing collateral, handling a showing, meeting a photographer or watching over a home staging.

Users can build networks of other agents to cooperate with exclusively or broadcast needs across multiple offices in their brokerage. On that front, users can create a mileage radius in which they’ll accept assignments.

There’s a “social” component to UnlockdBox, whereby agents can create profiles upon signup that highlight who they are, where they work and details about what work they’re open to accepting. The more detailed you can be in this section, the more apt you are to be chosen for work. Be open, be creative.

Upcoming and previous assignments can be tracked easily and also viewed as part of financial report of earnings made through the app.

Before accepting an assignment, agents need to accept a brief but critical terms and conditions meant to enforce professionalism and ethical standards when performing the task.

While agents can set their own fees, the app imposes a minimum of $30. There’s also a 15 percent fee that goes to UnlockdBox, paid by the assignee. Money can be exchanged through linked PayPal or Strip accounts.

Setting up tasks is as simple as completing a few text fields, establishing a duration, location and details.

The app then deploys a series of push notifications, email alerts and in-app signals as tasks are assigned, accepted, about to begin or finished.

The Vendor Marketplace is the product’s most recent feature update, and it makes sense here. Knowing what vendors are dependable and building those relationships is important for new agents, those networks become invaluable resources for future business.

Title companies, marketing services, mortgage providers and all other businesses within the orbit of real estate can find a place on the app’s vendor list. Yes, these kind of lists already exist everywhere, but there is value in having them available at the point of engagement, in the context of business.

If you already have a few partners you work with, UnlockdBox lets you invite them into the app and they’ll be listed with others in a simple but clear branded list. Categories of vendors can be swiped horizontally, and users need only fill out a quick need-form that alerts all vendors in that category, for example, notary, staging or yard-sign services.

The app has a little more than 1,000 users at the time of this review’s update. No, it’s not Wordle, but it is promising. The more agents who pick up on the value of outsourcing tasks, the more feedback and value UnlockdBox can receive and provide. There’s a lot of you out there, and more are signing up for licensing classes every day.

UnlockdBox is one of those tools you could find yourself using more often than you thought you would when you downloaded it. It can give busy agents a sense of relief and new agents an opportunity to get to that point.

As the industry continues to swell with new licensees seeking a cut of the current market, that many more are going to need experienced professionals to help them learn the ropes.

Have suggestions for products that you’d like to see reviewed by our real estate technology expert? Email Craig Rowe.

Craig C. Rowe started in commercial real estate at the dawn of the dot-com boom, helping an array of commercial real estate companies fortify their online presence and analyze internal software decisions. He now helps agents with technology decisions and marketing through reviewing software and tech for Inman.