Highlighting the company’s ability to identify not only homebuyer but seller leads, data analytics and marketing company Buyside has rebranded as Percy and expanded into mortgage — bolstered by $10 million in new equity funding from backers including Howard Hanna Real Estate Services and Leading Real Estate Companies of the World.
Although Brentwood, Tennessee-based Percy just announced its rebranding last week, the company’s mortgage clients already include Cornerstone Home Lending, Hunt Mortgage, Priority Home Lending and HomeServices of America subsidiary, Prosperity Home Mortgage.
Now, Percy also has a strategic alliance with real estate software, data and analytics provider Black Knight Inc., allowing Black Knight to offer a new customer engagement solution powered by machine learning, to monitor homeowner behavior “signals,” the companies announced Tuesday.
Charles Williams
Launched to help brokerages match buyers to listings, Buyside “evolved into an ecosystem that spans mortgages as well as real estate, across both the buy and sell sides of the real estate equation,” said Percy founder and CEO Charles Williams, in a statement. “Today, Percy analyzes billions of pre-buying as well as pre-selling signals in real estate consumers’ behavior to empower loan officers, real estate agents and brokers with actionable intelligence.”
Black Knight is the target of a $13.1 billion acquisition bid by Intercontinental Exchange Inc. (ICE), which seeks to integrate solutions built by both companies to create a “life of loan” mortgage platform that will produce cost saving efficiencies.
In making their case for the acquisition, which is expected to be scrutinized by antitrust regulators, ICE executives have said Black Knight offers real estate data capabilities that enable home search that ICE lacks, as well as solutions for secondary market investors and loan servicers. ICE sees itself as having superior lead generation and closing and post-closing tools.
The strategic alliance with Percy — which claims to be “real estate’s leading provider of homebuyer intent and seller leads” — expands Black Knight’s lead generation capabilities.
Ben Graboske
“Today’s housing market is categorized by record-low inventory and record-high home prices, which – together with sharply rising rates – continue to put downward pressure on purchase lending,” said Ben Graboske, president of data and analytics at Black Knight, in a statement. “As everyone in our industry is aware, generating inventory is key to lessening affordability pressures as well as keeping lender and real estate agent pipelines full. This strategic alliance with Percy will allow our clients across real estate and mortgage to use an AI-powered, big-data-fueled approach to intelligently engage with those customers, to build business while also generating inventory.”
Before rebranding as Percy, Buyside had built a stable of real estate brokerage clients including Baird & Warner, RE/MAX Results, RE/MAX Reliance and Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Fox & Roach.
Ron Wivagg
That track record helped Percy land HomeServices of America subsidiary Prosperity Home Mortgage as a client, said Ron Wivagg, national sales manager for Prosperity Home Mortgage.
“With Percy’s success and adoption from our real estate brands, it only made sense for PHM to leverage the same application for our loan officers,” Wivagg said in a statement. “We now have a tech ecosystem that services both the real estate and mortgage businesses, which helps us maintain oversight of our client’s intent to transact.”
Get Inman’s Extra Credit Newsletter delivered right to your inbox. A weekly roundup of all the biggest news in the world of mortgages and closings delivered every Wednesday. Click here to subscribe.
