A year after adding buy-before-you-sell options to its Offer Optimizer, real estate startup zavvie is leaning even harder into the power buyer market with the addition of cash backing and rent-to-own options from Divvy Homes, Feeasy, Flyhomes for Agents, Halo, Homeward, Knock, Landis, Ribbon and Super.
Lane Hornung
“Zavvie is giving the modern brokerage an expanded marketplace that will increase options for buyers, while keeping real estate agents at the center of every type of property transaction,” zavvie co-founder and CEO Lane Hornung said in a prepared statement. “New cash offer programs address the biggest challenge for buyers in the marketplace today – winning in a multiple offer situation.”
Much like the Offer Optimizer experience for listing agents, which includes an open market estimate alongside buy-before-you-sell and iBuyer options, buyers agents can compare and present cash-backing and rent-to-own options to their clients in one fell swoop.
The options are organized in an easy-to-read format that helps consumers understand transaction costs and potential savings based on which offer they choose.
Mark Johnson | JPAR
“Zavvie’s expanded marketplace for brokerages is helping turn more people with a desire to own a home into a market-ready buyer,” said Mark Johnson, who leads one of zavvie’s biggest partners, JPAR. “These innovative buyer-focused firms teaming with zavvie also are helping to level the playing field for first-time and repeat buyers.”
“With new tools like all-cash offers and buy-before-you-sell solutions, more buyers will compete successfully in the market today,” he added.
In an email interview with Inman, zavvie co-founder and Chief Data Officer Stefan Peterson said the decision to expand their marketplace’s power buying options was a result of heightened demand from their brokerage partners who wanted to help their agents give first-time buyers and sellers-turned-buyers a leg up in an “extreme market.”
“For first-time buyers and others, cash offer products let buyers finally compete with investors and others who can pay cash. It levels the playing field,” he said. “[The National Association of Realtors] says only 4 percent of first-time buyers bought with all cash in their most recent profile of buyers and sellers. Power buyers believe this number is going to increase significantly.”
Regarding homeowners who need to juggle two transactions, Peterson said power buyers “solve the chicken and the egg challenge that’s freezing out homeowners from becoming sellers. They take away the fear that is preventing people from selling their home as they can buy their next home and move in before they put their current home on the market.”
Cyril Berdugo | Credit: LinkedIn
Landis CEO Cyril Berdugo said he’s proud to become one of zavvie’s latest partners and help more agents provide their not-credit-worthy clients with a clear path to homeownership and greater financial security.
“This is technology at its best,” he said of the Landis platform, which provides renters with a detailed 12-to-24-month homeownership plan. “By leveraging technology and data science, the Landis homeownership program creates the best path for renters to become homeowners.”
Added Landis co-founder Tom Petit, “Through Landis, agents can help more people than ever become homeowners. And for the first time, agents don’t have to turn a single person away.”
Peterson said zavvie is continually searching for ways to help brokerages and their agents better serve homebuyers and homesellers and “accelerate the velocity of real estate transactions.”
“Consumers are seeking ways to increase the liquidity of their real estate holdings and are embracing models that help them buy and sell real estate more quickly, easily, and cost-effectively,” he said. “All the solutions on our platform — from iBuyers to Power Buyers to rent to own companies and listings concierge companies — do exactly that.”
