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A new real estate app for agents and their clients is aiming to become TikTok for real estate, its founder says.
Australian-based app developer Matthew Snowden has created 1060, a real estate listing app that advertises properties through videos of 60 seconds or less, rather than the traditional photo format, and allows users to search for properties by price, real estate agent, real estate brokerage and keywords in their chosen city across the globe.
“It’s probably the first short-form video app for listing [properties],” Snowden told Inman. “It’s almost as though Zillow and TikTok had a baby and came out with 1060.”
Matthew Snowden
In addition to featuring short-form videos, the app allows users to directly message the agent representing a property, get directions to a property, like and save properties, comment on properties and share them to all major social media channels. Agents and other users can also share files on the platform. The app is currently in beta, but still fully functional, and will be out of the beta phase by mid-January.
“We came along last year and thought, hang about — we’ve seen how apps like Robin Hood changed stock trading and made it really gamified and social for Gen Z, what Tinder and Bumble did for Gen Z dating, and of course, TikTok and entertainment in general,” Snowden said. “And we’re like, there’s something going on here.”
Snowden said he realized there was an opportunity to create something similar for real estate, where users could do an “endless scroll” of properties, and agents could work with a very simple platform that allows them to provide quick and easy access to properties to their potential clients.
Like TikTok, agents can shoot a video and immediately upload it to the platform and choose background music from a vast library of over 300,000 tracks. As of now, Snowden said that there is no function to create text to superimpose on top of videos, as is a popular tactic on TikTok, but he said more features like that will be coming in future updates to the app.
Snowden has already recruited a number of top luxury agents and brokers to use the app in its beta form, including Joyce Rey of Coldwell Banker, Deanna Kory of The Corcoran Group, Richard Steinberg of Compass, Jason Oppenheim of The Oppenheim Group and more. The app features a feed of luxury properties located across the globe, but is open to agents and properties at all price points.
Oppenheim told Inman that he’s not exactly quick to put his name behind new products but that he’s excited about what he’s seen from 1060 so far.
“I really like what these guys are doing here,” Oppenheim said. “I feel like short-form video really just makes a lot of sense in terms of promoting real estate.”
Jason Oppenheim
With attention spans getting shorter and short, Oppenheim said that he thought 1060’s format was ideal for consumers today.
“Thirty seconds, a minute for a property is about the right attention span,” he said. “It used to be that we would do these long, three to four-minute videos, but I’m not so sure that people look at them [now]. Even how we upload 50 photos [to a listing] — I feel like someone makes up their decision whether or not they want to go see a house in the first five to 10 photos.”
The app is available free for real estate agents to adopt, but all agents go through a vetting process. After they sign up for the app, the 1060 team reviews an agent’s online listing presence, social media and websites in order to verify that they’re a bona fide real estate agent.
Oppenheim added that he likes the app because it actually works to attract buyers.
“I like anything that can increase your ability to attract clients,” he said. “And I think it’s a nice way for agents to look at properties as well. I’m still oftentimes stuck on the MLS looking at photos, but I think it’s nice to be able to go on an app and look at short videos of a property as well. Videos give you a little better context as to the floorplan, the natural light, the scale. Videos are a lot more authentic.”
And in contrast to the days where consumers were going crazy over filters on social media, Oppenheim noted that they really value authenticity today.
Snowden also said that creating an authentic real estate social media experience is the app’s mission.
“We’re trying to make real estate authentic, social and fun,” he said, “which, we think it should be.”
Other social apps for real estate that have emerged in recent years have included Foiye, a platform that features videos, photos, and other content for home design and real estate enthusiasts, and Fredrik Eklund’s REAL, a social app he developed with Thomas Ma that bills itself as a mashup of WhatsApp, Instagram and Zillow.
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