by Melanie Klein | Aug 9, 2024 | Industry, News Feed
Consumer guides from the trade group offer a contrast to previous messaging but also continue to promote pre-emptive offers of compensation to buyer agents.
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After the National Association of Realtors came to a proposed settlement of multiple antitrust commission lawsuits in March, NAR President Kevin Sears was blunt about the changes the deal required.
“Some of this stuff, it sucks,” Sears told a roomful of real estate brokers at NAR’s midyear conference in May. “I get it.”
He went on to say that he did not think it was a good idea to remove buyer broker compensation from multiple listing services, which is one of the settlement’s mandates. “It sucks that it has to change,” he said.
Now, as NAR’s Aug. 17 deadline for MLSs to implement the deal’s changes approaches, the 1.5 million-member trade group has released buyer and seller guides last week that tout the changes as a “benefit” to consumers.
“NAR’s recent settlement has led to several changes that benefit homebuyers, and we wanted to clearly lay them out for you,” NAR said in a guide titled, “Homebuyers: Here’s What the NAR Settlement Means for You.”
A guide titled “Home Sellers: Here’s What the NAR Settlement Means for You,” contains nearly identical wording: “NAR’s recent settlement has led to several changes related to broker commissions that benefit sellers, and we wanted to clearly lay them out for you.”
NAR released the guides the same day Sears appeared at Inman Connect Las Vegas and received a mixed reception from attendees, whose views differed on how beneficial NAR has been for its dues-paying members.
In the wake of a multibillion-dollar jury verdict against NAR and major real estate franchisors in October, the trade group has struggled with its messaging to consumers and its members and has repeatedly cast the media as a villain in its efforts to defend the practice of cooperative compensation.
None of NAR’s hostility toward the settlement changes comes across in its new buyer and seller guides. The buyer guide lists several items on what the deal means for homebuyers, including:
You will sign a written agreement with your agent before touring a home.
Before signing this agreement, you should ensure it reflects the terms you have negotiated with your agent and that you understand exactly what services and value will be provided, and for how much.
The buyer agreement must include four components concerning compensation:
- A specific and conspicuous disclosure of the amount or rate of compensation the real estate agent will receive or how this amount will be determined.
- Compensation that is objective (e.g., $0, X flat fee, X percent, X hourly rate)—and not open-ended (e.g., cannot be “buyer broker compensation shall be whatever the amount the seller is offering to the buyer”).
- A term that prohibits the agent from receiving compensation for brokerage services from any source that exceeds the amount or rate agreed to in the agreement with the buyer; and,
- A conspicuous statement that broker fees and commissions are fully negotiable and not set by law.
The guides do, however, make sure to let both buyers and sellers know that sellers may still offer to pay buyer agents.
“The seller may agree to offer compensation to your agent,” the buyer guide reads. “This practice is permitted but the offer cannot be shared on a Multiple Listing Service (MLS)— MLSs are local marketplaces used by both buyer brokers and listing brokers to share information about properties for sale.
“You can still accept concessions from the seller, such as offers to pay your closing costs.”
At Inman Connect last week, clashing interpretations of the NAR settlement changes were clear, particularly in regard to cooperative compensation, also known as commission-sharing. At NAR’s midyear conference, the trade group’s legal team promoted the practice, detailed ways that listing brokers could advertise offers of compensation to buyer brokers outside of the MLS, and encouraged buyer agents to contact listing agents prior to showing a property to inquire about offers of compensation.
But panelists at Inman Connect discouraged the practice, which would also seem to go against what the U.S. Department of Justice has indicated they want to see happen: no offers of compensation from listing brokers to buyer brokers made anywhere so that the seller and listing agent have no influence on the amount buyers pay their agents.
The panelists favored having listing agents concern themselves solely with their own fee, buyer agents negotiate their compensation with buyers before showings, and buyers asking, if needed, for their agent’s compensation in a purchase offer, which the DOJ has specifically said would be permissible. The California Association of Realtors recently released new transaction forms that no longer support broker-to-broker offers of compensation, following an inquiry from the DOJ.
In contrast, NAR’s seller guide doubles down on the practice of pre-emptive offers of compensation to buyer brokers, telling sellers it’s a way to market their home and make their listing more attractive to buyers.
The guide states:
- You still have the choice of offering compensation to buyer brokers. You may consider doing this as a way of marketing your home or making your listing more attractive to buyers.
- Your agent must conspicuously disclose to you and obtain your approval for any payment or offer of payment that a listing broker will make to another broker acting for buyers.
- This disclosure must be made to you in writing in advance of any payment or agreement to pay another broker acting for buyers, and must specify the amount or rate of such payment.
- If you choose to approve an offer of compensation, there are changes to how this can happen.
- You as the seller can still make an offer compensation, but your agent cannot include it on a Multiple Listing Service (MLS)—MLSs are local marketplaces used by both buyer brokers and listing brokers to share information about properties for sale.
- Your agent can advertise your listing via off-MLS platforms such as social media, flyers and websites.
- You as the seller can still offer buyer concessions on an MLS (for example, concessions for buyer closing costs).
Neither guide named alternative ways that buyer agents could be paid, other than through offers made by the seller, or the possible implications of those alternative ways.
As the real estate industry goes through a major change after Aug. 17, it remains to be seen which rule interpretations and practices will prevail, whether they will pass muster for antitrust regulators such as the DOJ, and what consumers will make of the contrasting messages being lobbed at them.
NAR did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.
Email Andrea V. Brambila.
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by OB Jacobi | Aug 9, 2024 | Industry, News Feed
Agents can use Eden’s AI tools to compete for business with affordability, a unique advantage in a market that may soon find buyers having to pay directly for representation
Innovation is in our DNA at Inman — that’s why we’re excited about August’s Technology and Innovation Month. We’ll kick it off by celebrating the companies and individuals pushing the industry forward with an expanded slate of Inman Innovator Awards at Inman Connect Las Vegas. Then, we’ll continue to celebrate the brightest minds in real estate all month long.
Eden Homes (Eden), a mobile home search application and buyer agency experience powered by artificial intelligence, has formally launched its beta version in the App Store, Inman has learned through an exclusive press release.
The consumer and agent-facing app provides aspiring home buyers the ability to enter specific, detailed descriptions of home wants, save results, select and be updated to ideal matches, and tour homes on request for simple, affordable fees. Agents can test now and direct clients to it via the App Store.
Eden users can also search in collaboration with their selected agent or choose to access the company’s in-house negotiation, escrow management and showing services for a simple flat rate.
Eden is not a discount brokerage but instead uses its AI to reduce the workload and add value for any agent working with buyers. According to the company, the app’s search capabilities are advanced enough — and its AI so quick-learning — to significantly alleviate the tour burden and hand-holding that has, for too long, challenged buyer agents. The buyer can be granted control of the search without the agent being left out the relationship.
In turn, agents are able to compete for business with affordability, a unique advantage in a market that may soon find buyers having to pay directly for representation in cases where sellers decline to offer a commission that will cover listing broker costs and a buyer agent’s desired fee.
“The industry is at conferences trying to hone their objection handling skills instead of fundamentally trying to lower the cost for consumers with emerging technology,” said Eden CEO and co-founder Stormey Barton, in the release. “Eden’s flat rate services allow the average customer to buy a home at less than 1/5th the cost of a traditional agent.”
Barton may be referring to the wave of coaches, brokers and industry leaders speaking out about the importance of “communicating value” in an effort to earn a paycheck directly from buyer clients, a byproduct of the industry-dominating NAR settlement.
Buyers who engage Eden directly can apply savings to buy down their interest rate, which the company will handle on their behalf.
“This streamlined process results in an average total cost of around $2,000, a significant savings compared to the traditional model’s $15,000 average fee,” the release stated.
The company states its algorithms for nailing a buyer’s home preferences rely in part on in-app user activity signals and reactions to scoring. Eden also automatically reads listing imagery and looks for matches based on favorited home features, such as “lots of land” or “family rooms with vaulted ceilings.” Loved or liked homes are scored and saved accordingly in categorized lists.
Home search solutions using AI are emerging quickly as the technology continues to evolve. At first delivered primarily through chatbots, the growth of LLMs has made it possible for consumers to have more human-like, contextual interactions with a search interface and, in the case of Eden, use it to conduct ongoing market research instead of merely initiating a search.
Lundy uses it to assist the visually impaired by pairing it with verbal input, and LocalizeOS applies it to lead cultivation and business analytics, among other emerging industry examples.
Eden’s leadership comes with diverse industry acumen. Barton co-founded land investment fund Peregine Land alongside Eden partner Noah Pape, a graduate of Stanford’s Mathematical and Computational Sciences program. Luke Mizell, who led business development and launched the tech accelerator program at Keller Williams, and Ben Richards, who was an engineer at Affirm, round out the executive suite.
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by Nick Schlekeway | Aug 8, 2024 | Industry, News Feed
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Digital mortgage lender Better boosted loan production by 45 percent during the second quarter and said it’s on track to originate more than $1 billion in mortgages in Q3 for the first time in two years.
But investors weren’t buying the company’s comeback story Thursday, with shares in Better losing nearly 20 percent of their value after the company posted a $42 million Q2 net loss and said it would execute a 1-for-50 reverse stock split on Aug. 16 to avoid delisting from the Nasdaq Capital Market.
In boosting Q2 loan production to $962 million, Better saw revenue grow by 41 percent from quarter-to-quarter, to $31.4 million.
By keeping expenses flat at $73 million, Better was able to trim its net loss by 18 percent from Q1 and finish the quarter with $507 million in cash, restricted cash, short-term investments and self-funded loans.
Vishal Garg | Better
“We are very pleased with the growth and continued progress towards profitability we demonstrated in the second quarter of 2024, through a continued challenging macro environment with persistently high rates,” Better founder and CEO Vishal Garg said, in a statement.
“Our investments in purchase and home equity products, where we see growth being less rate-sensitive, generated sizable outperformance. We also saw strong early performance in sales and operating efficiency through investments in AI and our new commission model.”
Shares in Better, which lost more than 90 percent of their value last year when the company went public in a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), initially fell 33 percent when markets opened Thursday morning after earnings were released. At 32 cents, Thursday’s low was not far above Better’s all-time low of 30 cents, registered on May 24.
While shares in Better rebounded in afternoon trading following the company’s earnings call to close at 39 cents, that represented a 19 percent drop from Wednesday’s closing price of 48 cents.
Better trimming losses
Better, which has racked up $1.8 billion in cumulative losses through June 30, has slashed expenses by laying off thousands of workers.
At the company’s peak in 2021, it employed 10,400 workers with 6,100 located in the U.S., 4,200 in India and 100 in the U.K. By the end of last year, Better had slimmed down to 820 employees, with 335 based in the U.S., an equal number in India and another 150 in the U.K.
In announcing first-quarter earnings in May, Garg said Better was in growth mode again, hiring industry veteran Chad Smith to supervise mortgage operations and shifting to a commission-based compensation structure to hire more experienced loan officers.
While Better has managed to flatten expenses, it’s struggled to grow revenue as elevated home prices and mortgage rates have forced mortgage lenders to fight for a over a smaller pie. If mortgage rates continue to come down from 2024 peaks, many lenders expect business to rebound.
Garg said that while Better has been “intensely focused on reducing expenses and maximizing operating efficiency during the highly challenging macro environment,” it’s also been willing to “lean into certain growth expenses, such as marketing and compensation for larger loan production teams to produce higher volumes.”
While Better slashed vendor compensation expenses, marketing and advertising expenses were up by 87 percent from Q1, to $8.5 million, “and we expect these to further increase in order to support volume growth,” Garg said.
On Thursday’s earnings call, Chief Financial Officer Kevin Ryan said the investment Better has made in AI and other technology should allow it to scale loan volume by a factor of 10 with “very little fixed expense growth.”
Ryan said the most critical number to returning the company to profitability is revenue, rather than loan volume.
Kevin Ryan
“What we’re going to try to do in September is do a investor meeting where we actually lay out that math and create specificity [about Better’s path to profitability], but it will be a combination of volume and gain-on-sale margin,” Ryan said. Ryan will be pitching the company’s prospects next week at investor conferences scheduled for Aug. 14 and Aug. 15.
Better saw Q2 gain-on-sale margin improve to 2.43 percent, which Garg attributed to “increased pricing, while still remaining the low-cost provider, and a focus on customer retention through improved service, as well as efforts to optimize for the best execution across our network of loan purchasers.”
Better expecting Q3 originations to exceed $1 billion
*Q3 2022 through Q2 2024 represent actual loans funded. Better estimates Q3 2024 mortgage originations will exceed $1 billion. Source: Better earnings reports.
Better, which funded $58 billion in mortgages during the 2021 refinancing boom, saw originations dwindle to just $3 billion last year as the Federal Reserve’s efforts to fight inflation sent mortgage rates soaring to levels not seen in two decades.
Better’s refinancing volume dropped 96 percent last year to just $203 million, down from $5.13 billion in 2022.
While Better saw most of its refinancing business evaporate, it also did significantly less business with homebuyers. Last year, Better funded $2.74 billion in purchase loans, down 56 percent from $6.22 billion in 2022. Better’s newly launched home equity line of credit (HELOC) offering generated $67 million in 2023 originations.
During Q2 2024, purchase mortgages accounted for 83 percent of Better’s $962 million in loan production, followed by HELOCs (9 percent) and refinancing (8 percent).
Better said it expects total loan originations will surpass $1 billion in Q3 for the first time since 2022.
Garg said new rules governing how real estate agents work with homebuyers that take effect Aug. 17 should benefit Better, because buyers will be more likely to do online research to find both an agent and a mortgage.
“I think that’s forced consumers to potentially shop around Realtors, and then if they’re going to shop around for Realtors, they’re going to go online,” Garg said. “And when they go online, they come to us.”
With research showing that most consumers haven’t been willing to shop for a mortgage in the past, there’s “potential for there to be significant disruption,” Garg said.
Better is also hiring real estate agents who work with buyers as W-2 employees and helping them obtain a dual license, allowing them to originate mortgages. The program, Better Duo, is being piloted in 27 states and Washington, D.C.
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by Kevelyn Guzman | Aug 8, 2024 | Industry, News Feed
Franchisor reported its U.S. agent count fell 6.3 percent during the second quarter as revenue fell 4.8 percent compared to a year earlier, according to its earnings report.
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RE/MAX announced on Thursday that its revenue has fallen each quarter for the past two years as the down market continued to cut into the company’s earnings and agent count.
The franchisor reported losing just under 1,000 agents in the second quarter of this year, dropping 0.7 percent to 143,542 agents. In North America, the drop was even steeper as RE/MAX reported losing 4.4 percent of its agents in the U.S. and Canada, where it had 78,599 agents to start the third quarter.
Revenue fell 4.8 percent compared to a year earlier, the franchisor reported, and it expects it to keep falling.
In a statement, RE/MAX Holdings CEO Erik Carlson called the second quarter results “better than expected.”
“We continue to operate our business as efficiently and effectively as possible, which contributed to better-than-expected second-quarter financial results,” Carlson said. “Both during and after the quarter, we were pleased to announce notable brokerage and team conversions to RE/MAX, testament to our brand’s strong reputation and value proposition in the market.”
The company reported earning $3.7 million in profit for the quarter, according to its earnings report.
Agent count fell sharpest in the U.S. during the quarter, dropping by 6.3 percent to 53,406, RE/MAX reported. It grew by 4.2 percent outside the U.S. and Canada, to 64,943. At best, the company said it expects to lose none of its agents next quarter. At worst, it said it’s anticipating losing up to 1.5 percent of its agents.
Overall, the company generated $78.5 million in revenue during the second quarter, which was down $4 million from a year earlier.
The company has been aggressively moving to control its expenses at the same time it has watched revenue drop. It reported cutting 10.1 percent of expenses in the quarter compared to a year earlier.
As of June 30, the company reported having $66.1 million in cash and cash equivalents, down $16.6 million from December 2023. RE/MAX has $442.7 million in outstanding debt, down slightly from the end of last year.
RE/MAX said it expects to pull in between $75 million and $80 million next quarter. That would represent a drop between 1.5 percent to 8.3 percent compared to the third quarter of 2023.
RE/MAX is set to hold a call with investors on Friday morning.
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by Latham Jenkins | Aug 8, 2024 | Industry, News Feed
Realtor.com parent company Move Inc. saw its fiscal Q4 revenue decrease 2 percent yearly to $143 million as traffic to the site stalls at 74 million average monthly unique visitors.
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Realtor.com parent company Move Inc.’s fiscal fourth-quarter revenue decreased 2 percent year over year to $143 million, according to an earnings release issued Thursday.
News Corp — which owns Move Inc. — said higher mortgage rates and other macroeconomic headwinds were responsible for the decline. Real estate revenues, which account for 80 percent of Move’s total revenue, declined 2 percent annually. Realtor.com’s lead volume and website traffic growth were flat during the quarter, with the latter metric reaching 74 million average monthly unique visitors based on internal data.
Overall, News Corp’s digital real estate services segment performed well, with revenues growing 21 percent annually to $448 million. The segment’s EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) increased 25 percent annually to $135 million due to a strong performance at the Melbourne-based residential portal REA Group.
Unlike most U.S.-based companies, News Corp uses a reporting method that ends the year on June 30. What most companies call their second quarter is referred to at News Corp as the fourth quarter.
Robert Thomson
In a prepared statement before the company’s earnings call, News Corp CEO Robert Thomson said News Corp is primed to “prosper in the [artificial intelligence] age as they leverage a multi-year global agreement that gives OpenAI access to new and archived articles published by News Corp’s subsidiaries, including The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post.
“Fiscal 2024 was an outstanding year for News Corp, as we not only delivered robust earnings growth and created substantial shareholder value, but took a significant step to prepare the Company to prosper in the AI age,” he said in a written statement.
“Our landmark agreement with OpenAI is not only expected to be lucrative but will enable us to work closely with a trusted, pre-eminent partner to fashion a future for professional journalism and for provenance.”
Thomson said Digital Real Estate Services — which includes Move — was partially responsible for the company’s full-year growth, which yielded revenues of $10.09 billion (+2 percent YOY).
Digital Real Estate Services’ full-year revenue increased 8 percent year over year to $1.7 billion; however, Move’s full-year revenues dropped 10 percent to $544 million. Real estate revenues, which account for 80 percent of Move’s total revenue, declined 11 percent as the referral model and core lead generation output declined in the face of continued market headwinds. Lead volumes declined 3 percent for the year, the earnings release explained.
“Our core pillars of growth — Book Publishing, Digital Real Estate Services and Dow Jones — inspired the increasing profitability, and their strength augurs well for Fiscal 2025,” he said. “We are confident in the Company’s long-term prospects and are continuing to review our portfolio with a focus on maximizing returns for shareholders.”
Susan Panuccio | Credit: LinkedIn
In the company’s earnings call, Thomson and Chief Financial Officer Susan Panuccio were bullish about Realtor.com’s recent moves, which include the “111 reasons” advertising campaign championing buyer agency; updates to the portal’s buy- and sell-side offerings, Advantage Pro, Real Choice Selling and Listing Toolkit; and a partnership with Zillow.
“Encouragingly, we are continuing to have notable success diversifying our revenue base with accelerating performance from our sell-side offerings; rentals, which includes our newly formed partnership with Zillow; and new homes,” Panuccio said. “Collectively, those businesses accounted for 19 percent of revenues in the quarter and grew substantially versus the prior year.”
“As we communicated last quarter, we are focused on best positioning Realtor.com for a housing recovery,” she added. “Our key strategic focus areas remain the same as we head into the new financial year and include modernizing our technology stack; investing in content for our product offerings, which most recently included the release of a new dynamic mapping feature; and leveraging News Corp’s network to drive audience share.”
Thomson didn’t directly comment on Realtor.com’s rivalry with CoStar-owned residential portal Homes.com, which escalated during the quarter as Move filed an advertising challenge with the Better Business Bureau Program’s National Advertising Division and a theft of trade secrets lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of California.
“… the market itself was sluggish and the competition more intense,” he said.
The CEO ended his comments by lauding Realtor.com CEO Damian Eales’ leadership while noting the portal is prepared to handle the coming change in commission procedures and take advantage of a market turnaround.
“The market does seem on the cusp of a revival,” he said. “I have to say that Damian has done an excellent job in taking full advantage of our media platforms to raise the profile of [Realtor.com] and drive traffic, and there’s much anticipation [and] excitement.”
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by Mauricio Umansky | Aug 8, 2024 | Industry, News Feed
Waltz provides a digital on-ramp for foreign real estate investors to buy property in the United States. It helps them establish a banking presence, an LLC, gain an EIN, transfer currencies and safely wire funds.
Innovation is in our DNA at Inman — that’s why we’re excited about August’s Technology and Innovation Month. We’ll kick it off by celebrating the companies and individuals pushing the industry forward with an expanded slate of Inman Innovator Awards at Inman Connect Las Vegas. Then, we’ll continue to celebrate the brightest minds in real estate all month long.
Waltz helps foreign real estate investors buy US property
Platforms: Browser
Ideal for: Agents who work with foreign investors
Top selling points:
• Minimal, transparent UX
• Near-automated LLC creation
• Investor Kit setup
• Compliant and regulated
• Fintech-inspired
Top concern(s):
The company will need to hone its target market of agents carefully as it ramps up its presence because the pool of agents who work with or target foreign investors is shallow. However, that’s because it’s always been a difficult process. Waltz can change that.
What you should know
Waltz provides a digital on-ramp for foreign real estate investors to buy property in the United States. It helps them establish a banking presence, an LLC, gain an EIN, transfer currencies and safely wire funds. While the company will conduct direct marketing efforts to investors, it will work with real estate agents to educate them on its workflow efficiencies and demonstrate that the long-standing administrative hurdles for outside investors only needed a sharp technology solution to be conquered.
This is the fintech personified. I’ve long said that the back-end financial processes of buying real estate are the true anchors to shrinking the real estate transaction. This is why cash buys have become more common. The mortgage experience is awful.
Brendan Wallace of Fifth Wall told me in an interview that too many entities make money on the intrinsic friction of financing real estate. Like movie studios finally embracing streaming, only when big banks learn to make money off of the lean digital transaction will it all become easier.
Now think about it what it’s like for someone in Tel Aviv or Jakarta to park money in a U.S.-based hard asset. This is what Waltz is out to change. And why not?
I understand there will be cynics about a software-driven process that makes it easier for non-domestic entities to buy rental property. The stereotype will fall somewhere in between outright bigotry and frustration with less availability for low-income buyers. But let’s not pretend this isn’t happening in countless, less-transparent ways or that institutional born-and-bred investors don’t hide their real estate ownership stakes in layers of LLCs and shells.
On the contrary, Waltz is a small, nimble Miami-based firm working with individual buyers who are setting up traceable, regulated companies.
Moreover, the rise of decentralized finance (DeFi) is going to eventually up-end what we’re used to, anyway. Here’s what Forbes has to say about it:
Today, almost every aspect of banking, lending and trading is managed by centralized systems, operated by governing bodies and gatekeepers. Regular consumers need to deal with a raft of financial middlemen to get access to everything from auto loans and mortgages to trading stocks and bonds.
In the U.S., regulatory bodies like the Federal Reserve and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) set the rules for the world of centralized financial institutions and brokerages, and Congress amends the rules over time.
As a result, there are few paths for consumers to access capital and financial services directly. They cannot bypass middlemen like banks, exchanges and lenders, who earn a percentage of every financial and banking transaction as profit. We all have to pay to play.
DeFi challenges this centralized financial system by disempowering middlemen and gatekeepers, and empowering everyday people via peer-to-peer exchanges.
In short, get used to more companies like Waltz driving change, and lifting up the real estate market as they do.
This is a great vehicle for real estate agents who have friends overseas or property managers wanting to carve a new market. It wouldn’t take much to start spreading the reach of your marketing to places like Spain, Switzerland or Brazil.
Waltz deploys a very lightweight, mobile-inspired front end that’s certainly had time to mature in its lengthy stealth period. I saw some future looks and it’s only moving in the right direction.
Users need to verify their identity with multiple forms of ID, images and even a live video call and selfie. An LLC name is picked for them (otherwise the delay of trying to overly personalize a name would negate the application’s intent) and the Investor Kit is finalized when the banking relationship with Regent Bank is finalized. Users can choose a registered agent or remain the primary contact on the new entity.
Currency preferences get set up and a partnership put in place with Visa’s CurrencyCloud, a “cross-border money movement solutions for banks, Fintechs, FX brokers, corporates, and other payment institutions,” further flattens the process. Funds can be wired, withdrawn and deposited as needed under an established global finance presence.
There are market opportunities here for property managers, inspectors and every other branch of rental industry service provider, as well as the listing agents marketing rental-grade property.
This brings to light one other concern I have on this front: It’s hard for property managers to wrestle decisions and often even simple answers from landlords around the corner, let alone six time zones away. I would like to see some communication best practices shared or at least a bridge plan to span this potential gap, which could even have language challenges at times.
There’s a DocuSign integration for familiar paperwork automation, too. There’s nothing here to scare off an agent new to international buyer representation and, in the interest of tying a bow around it all, know that everything about Waltz lives up to its name. Elegant. Smooth. And more sophisticated than it looks.
Moving money around the world isn’t easy, but, somehow, Waltz does it in only a few steps.
Have a technology product you would like to discuss? 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 and proptechs with technology and partnership decisions and lends his expertise to Inman to review and report on the people and products inciting industry change.
