by Victoria Kennedy | Jun 25, 2025 | Industry, News Feed
By promoting family-friendly amenities, Victoria Kennedy writes, you can make your marketing more irresistible to moms and dads who are ready to become homeowners.
Since the NAR commission suit settlement, buyer agents have faced new rules, new documents and a new normal. This month, Inman drills down on Today’s Buyers Agent with the fresh marketing strategies, skills and tools buyer agents are using to prosper in changing times.
There’s little question that price will always be a factor in real estate. However, if you’re trying to attract families to your listing, or if you frequently work with families as a buyer’s agent, cost doesn’t always drive their decision to put down a bid. For many homebuyers who have (or intend to have) children, planting roots in a neighborhood that features family-friendly amenities takes precedence over price.
This presents a major opportunity. Research shows that younger families are moving into the suburbs in record numbers. According to 2024 research from the Economic Innovation Group, twice the number of families have relocated into more rural areas than before the pandemic. In other words, your suburban or rural market may have more interest from families seeking properties that aren’t in congested cities.
What exactly can you do to appeal to all these families looking for the type of real estate your market offers? Try including some of these features within your marketing.
Community gathering spaces
Highlight indoor and outdoor areas that are accessible to all homeowners. These can be a huge draw for parents with kids.
Pools and well-designed playgrounds catch the attention of families looking to find the ideal place to call home. In terms of indoor spaces, a community fitness facility and room for events show families that the community has anticipated their needs. Some people like the idea of hosting gatherings in spaces other than their homes. Consequently, it’s convenient for them if they have a neighborhood space at their disposal.
Walkable areas
Far too many children are nature-deficient, spending less time outside than they should. And being cooped up can have long-term ramifications. As noted in recent research, nature deficiency can lead to cognitive, social and behavioral issues. Therefore, parents seeking real estate may want walkable areas.
An example of walkability could be extra-wide streets or sidewalks. Even if a listing’s neighborhood doesn’t have those features, it may still be appealing if it’s close to trails or paths. That way, families can get the exercise they need.
Be sure to consider communities that are friendly to bike riders as well. People for Biking research shows that bicycling is trending across the United States. Highlight bike racks set up throughout a development to encourage families to bike together.
Sustainable features
Young families are into the practice of sustainability. For instance, younger drivers are opting for electric vehicles more frequently than older drivers, according to Pew Research. With this in mind, highlight homes and neighborhoods that feature electric vehicle charging stations.
There are other ways to show that a neighborhood has been planned with sustainability in mind. Landscaping that includes native plants that aren’t hard on the environment and don’t use a lot of fossil fuels to maintain offers responsible curb appeal.
Another eco-friendly feature is solar-powered exterior lights. The less reliant lights are on the electric grid, the better. Be sure that you’re letting potential homebuyers know about sustainable offerings in all your listings’ marketing materials.
Safety updates
Parents want to raise their children in safe communities. Consequently, do all you can to highlight safety features. Recently repaired or redone sidewalks and common spaces are a good place to start. Well-lit neighborhoods and safety enhancements, such as street lamps or community entrance spotlights, are good features to point out to potential buyers.
Business and education accessibility
Offering easy access to the community may be a differentiator for a neighborhood. For example, you may want to emphasize proximity to local businesses, eateries, stores and schools. Many planned communities feature on-site places to dine and shop. If you’re able to include those types of establishments within your pitch, you may increase desire and demand from first-time and young homebuyers with growing families.
Every time you add a family to your market, you’re adding more diversity to the fabric of the neighborhoods you serve, while boosting your revenue streams. Families can be finicky about where they decide to plant roots. By focusing on promoting family-friendly amenities, you can make your service more irresistible to moms and dads who are ready to become homeowners.
Victoria Kennedy is CEO of Atman Real Estate. Connect with her via email.
by Victoria Kennedy | Sep 10, 2024 | Industry, News Feed
Barcelona-based computer vision software firm Restb.ai expanded its reach to 17 new multiple listing services in New York, Rhode Island, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Florida, Alabama, Minnesota, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, Arizona, California, and British Columbia during the first half of the year, growing its reach to more than 720,000 MLS members across the U.S. and Canada.
Whether it’s refining your business model, mastering new technologies, or discovering strategies to capitalize on the next market surge, Inman Connect New York will prepare you to take bold steps forward. The Next Chapter is about to begin. Be part of it. Join us and thousands of real estate leaders Jan. 22-24, 2025.
Barcelona-based computer vision software firm Restb.ai expanded its reach to 17 new multiple listing services in New York, Rhode Island, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Florida, Alabama, Minnesota, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, Arizona, California and British Columbia during the first half of the year, growing its reach to more than 720,000 MLS members across the U.S. and Canada.
Dominik Pogorzelski | Credit: LinkedIn
“Hundreds of thousands of real estate agents and brokers can now leverage the magic of Restb.ai computer vision to create richer and more complete property listings,” Restb.ai General Manager Dominik Pogorzelski said in a prepared statement. “This new tech they are deploying will help sellers sell homes faster and help buyers better find the home that matches their personal needs, wants, and desires.”
Founded in 2015, Restb.ai enables agents to add listings to the MLS quickly through artificial intelligence and computer vision models that glean key property information from photos and generate descriptions within seconds.
The computer vision models can identify interior room types and detect features such as marble countertops, stainless steel appliances, high ceilings, stone fireplaces, and hardwood flooring. For the exterior, the computer models can identify outdoor features including in-ground pools, decks, patios and firepits.
After identifying all of the home’s key features, Restb.ai generates listing descriptions, image captioning, and alt-text/metadata in more than 50 languages. Agents can manually edit the captions and descriptions, or use Restb.ai to adjust the text with several preset writing tones, including descriptive, playful, standard, professional and simple.
In a phone call with Inman, Pogorzelski said Restb.ai’s expansion has been partially fueled by its relationship with CoreLogic, ICE (formally Black Knight), Rapattoni, FBS, dynaConnections, and several other key vendors who’ve been able to showcase the benefits of Restb.ai’s tech.
“We have a lot of these partnerships where our technology is already integrated or being integrated,” he said. “So, oftentimes, it’s a joint effort with our partners to obviously kind of showcase the benefits MLSs and their members get by adopting this AI technology, which is increased efficiency, better data completeness, better compliance for the MLSs.”
Pogorzelski said feedback from Restb.ai’s newest cohort of MLSs has been “largely positive” as agents continue to push past their initial concerns about integrating AI into their businesses.
“As [with] any new technology, there are always a group of people who are a bit more hesitant to change. You’ll have the early adopters and you’ll have the late adopters,” he said. “It’s the same way when Google comes out with a new interface on Gmail; some people will get frustrated and prefer things to be the old way, even though the new way is better, faster and more efficient.”
With this in mind, Pogorzelski said Restb.ai has been laser-focused on distributing communication kits and hosting training sessions that help enthusiastic and hesitant adopters alike navigate the platform with greater ease. These kits and sessions, he said, have been key to not only helping agents understand Restb.ai but also the ins and outs of how AI and computer vision work.
Nathan Brannen, Restb.ai CPO
“It’s been great to show that there’s a face behind the AI, and there are humans who are helping to make this as accurate, as fast, as helpful as possible,” he said, while noting Restb.ai’s team does weekly updates to the more than 20 models it utilizes. “A lot is running under the hood to make everything work right … and make everything on top look seamless and as smooth as possible.”
Now that Restb.ai has reached a milestone of 50 MLSs across the U.S. and Canada, the team is working hard to keep the momentum going. Although Pogorzelski declined to share a specific goal — “I don’t want to jinx it or speak out of turn,” he said — he and Chief Product Officer Nathan Brannen said the industry will be seeing much more of Restb.ai as they continue to improve the platform.
“By deploying these cutting-edge solutions, they are elevating industry efficiency. And this is just the early stages of AI with more exciting — and valuable improvements — to come,” Brannen said in a written statement. “MLSs are among the first to bring practical and valuable AI-powered solutions en masse to real estate professionals.”
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by Victoria Kennedy | Aug 22, 2024 | Industry, News Feed
CEO Brian Bair told National Mortgage News in a recent interview that agents no longer view Offerpad as a threat, noting they can make 4 percent if a client takes the company’s cash offer and the home is updated and resold.
Whether it’s refining your business model, mastering new technologies, or discovering strategies to capitalize on the next market surge, Inman Connect New York will prepare you to take bold steps forward. The Next Chapter is about to begin. Be part of it. Join us and thousands of real estate leaders Jan. 22-24, 2025.
Offerpad CEO Brian Bair sent a message of confidence in his company’s business model and ability to turn a profit in a recent interview with National Mortgage News.
The company’s shares fell to all-time lows after it shared details from its second-quarter performance earlier this month.
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The company reported a $13.8 million net loss in the second quarter on $251.1 million in revenue. That was slightly better than the first quarter, when Offerpad lost $17.5 million.
Around the same time, the company laid off employees in sales, marketing and operations as it sought to contain its expenses in a bid to regain profitability.
CEO Brian Bair told National Mortgage News that Offerpad was focused more on fewer transactions and wider margins.
Offerpad is focused on expanding its offerings past its cash offer and renovation systems, adding in-house lending to its product list.
“Integrating mortgage with some of our other technology solutions is going to be really important,” Bair told the outlet. “We’re pausing just to figure out when and how to do it, and frankly, making sure that the customer is getting the same experience with mortgage as our other products.”
Offerpad executives have been working to pivot from a sellers to a buyers market by shrinking the company’s “buy box” — narrowing the scope of the homes that it evaluates for purchase, and adjusting the input variables in its underwriting model to be more conservative.
“What we’ve been doing is staying very disciplined and being more specific about the inventory we’re buying. Making sure there’s not a bunch of active (listings) in the area,” Bair said.
The company picked up 831 homes in the second quarter, down slightly from 840 homes purchased in the second quarter of 2023.
Bair said Offerpad was leaving its homes on the market longer, rather than lowering its prices to meet potential buyers. Meanwhile, the company is leaning into its renovation capabilities to offer homes that will appeal to buyers, Bair said.
“We’re focused on having a really nice, renovated product we can put on the market, and that’s an advantage to some of the other homes in the area,” Bair told the news outlet. “New carpet, new paint, new appliances, new fixtures.”
Offerpad views its renovation business as an advantage and a money-maker, offering its construction and remodeling services to investors in the markets it operates in.
Bair said he thought agents no longer viewed Offerpad as a threat, noting they can make 4 percent if a client takes the company’s cash offer and the home is updated and resold.
He said he thought that more buyers would begin working directly with listing agents as a result of the settlements related to the antitrust litigation brought by homesellers.
“If somebody goes to a platform [and] they want to get into a house, I think they’re going to get more comfortable with it, and the listing agent is going to get more comfortable with showing the home,” Bair said. “Whether that takes six months or six years, I don’t know. But I do think you’re going to see a pretty significant transition.”
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by Victoria Kennedy | Aug 14, 2024 | Industry, News Feed
Whether it’s refining your business model, mastering new technologies, or discovering strategies to capitalize on the next market surge, Inman Connect New York will prepare you to take bold steps forward. The Next Chapter is about to begin. Be part of it. Join us and thousands of real estate leaders Jan. 22-24, 2025.
Nearly 5,000 Keller Williams agents descended on Austin, Texas, this week for the franchisor’s annual Mega Agent Camp, a three-day conference aimed at educating and training agents to navigate the market. While the usual conference fare is on the agenda — social media tips, buyer and seller lead generation strategies, and lessons on work-life balance — the upcoming deadline for buyer-broker commission changes underlies every session as agents brace for an uncertain future.
Jason Abrams
Ten minutes before hitting the stage for Gary Keller’s State of Housing Market address, Keller Williams Head of Industry and Learning Jason Abrams spoke to Inman about the “perfect timing” of this year’s conference and the franchisor’s gameplan for helping agents not only survive but thrive through commission changes.
Inman: What are you most excited about for this year’s Mega Agent Camp? What is the main focus of this year’s conference, and what’s the main message you hope agents will walk away with after these next few days?
Abrams: I have two messages. The first one we covered yesterday at our CEO event. We spent a lot of time covering this idea of [being] antifragile. This was an idea that was laid out by a famous economist, and the idea is that there are some things that they’re not just tough, but they’re antifragile, meaning that when they are put under stress, they actually get stronger.
We made the argument that it’s not enough to just weather the storm, and it’s not enough to just get through it. If you really wanted to thrive and be antifragile, you would be growing and you’d be stronger [with] the more stress that you deal with. Then we laid out this whole concept of how to actually train for it.
The second idea we discussed is, “Win the morning, win the day.” This is the idea that when you look at your life [and] the things that are important to you — your job, your business, your spirituality, your physical health and key relationships — all these things end up having one thing that you can do each day to move them forward.
As long as that one thing is done before 12 o’clock every day, then you’re going to win. It doesn’t matter what happens in the afternoon. Have a great day by noon, and if you add up a ton of days like that, you’re going to have an amazing career.
We’re going to touch on that throughout the whole week.
Being ‘antifragile’ is such an interesting idea, and it certainly seems like a timely message as the industry nears the Aug. 17 deadline for procedural changes listed in the National Association of Realtors’ buyer-broker commission settlement. How are you tying the idea of being antifragile into helping agents navigate these big, upcoming changes?
Change is inevitable, but participation is optional. We’re asking our agents to lean in to change so that in the end, they end up with stronger businesses and better careers. We’re also making sure they get all the accurate information, as opposed to passing off opinions that they might be seeing on social media as facts because that’s very dangerous.
We’re also making sure that they understand exactly what the rule changes are, they’re 100 percent in compliance, and understand how their local boards and multiple listing services are embracing these changes. That’s the most important thing for us because we believe that real estate is a local business driven by local relationships.
We’re teaching agents to follow all the rules and then wait for best practices to emerge. This idea of running and making wholesale changes prior to understanding what the best practices are doesn’t make any sense to us.
That’s a great point. For months, industry leaders have been discussing the myriad of ways this could play out, but we truly won’t know how this will turn out until after Aug. 17. That’s when the journey really begins. In the meantime, I see that your agenda is really focusing on helping agents go back to basics and hone those core skills. With all that’s happening, what’s the core skill or business strategy you want KW agents to latch onto?
We wrote the class Value² [in March], and I think we were the first real estate company to kind of come out with a full-blown course that says, ‘OK, great. It’s value that a consumer is always willing to pay for’ and understanding what your value is and how that value actually leads to helping the buyer or seller accomplish is the primary goal.
We can’t do this in a loose way; we have to be able to directly tie to it, so we have all kinds of panels featuring buyer’s agents and listing agents who have designed unique value propositions. They’ve gotten the results they’re looking for, and they’ve documented it. We’ve always been in a database-driven business, and I believe we still are, which means that these real estate agents have anywhere from 500 to 300,000 people in their databases.
Those people [in those databases] need to get their real estate news from their real estate agent. So how do we empower our agents to go and do that? We’re going to be explaining how to do it best on social media. We’re going to explain how to do it best with their sphere of influence and powerful touch programs. We’re going to explain how to do it best at educational events as well as just a fun party event.
We’re going to go methodically, step by step, so that they can explain their value at scale.
That’s needed. When I talk to my friends and family about what’s happening, there’s still a lot of confusion, and they’re going to be looking to agents for guidance. We’ve talked about how you’re guiding agents to handle change, but how has KW leadership prepared itself for this change? How is KW, as a company, prepared to evolve?
At the end of the day, we’re a people development company, and your question is so sage because we asked the same one. How would a people development company go about helping people work through change? The first thing we did was set up all-company open houses. We’ve done two of them where we explain what’s actually changing and went through the settlement.
The next thing that we did was we started writing courses specific to agent value because that’s at the forefront of the change, and that course is called Value². We then said, ‘OK, well, what are the best practices for agents to show value?’ We actually published this week a new playbook, the Millionaire Real Estate Agent Playbook Volume 2, which has over 71 pages of plays that a real estate agent can run all the way from: How do I generate more buyers and sellers to talk to? to “How do I provide them more value? and How do I scale my business?
And then, finally, sometimes we just get lucky with timing. Getting all of our top people together in Austin for Mega Agent Camp this week is perfect, and we’re going to spend the next three days talking about the changes that are ahead. I couldn’t be more excited about the timing, and I really think our people are prepared.
Email Marian McPherson
