For over a hundred years, selling a home involved one option: offering it for sale on the open market. While that’s still how most homes sell today, innovations in fintech backed by billions in capital are giving sellers more options than ever. If agents don’t bring more options to the table themselves, they will be left behind.
The four pillars that will help drive our real estate market forward include the bridge, the instant sale, the listing concierge and the open market. At zavvie, we have built all four of these options into the newest version of our Offer Optimizer brokerage solution.
Here’s how they work.
A New Bridge
A bridge sale is simply the ability to buy a home and move into it before you sell your current one, “bridging” the homeownership gap. Real estate agents know many clients would love to do this, but can’t.
Lenders offer high-interest bridge loans as a solution, but many who need them can’t get approved. Fintech models are offering a new kind of bridge solution, such as Easy Knock’s. The startup already operates in all 50 states. It’s not a bank, lender or an iBuyer. Easy Knock buys your house and leases it back to you, which allows you to purchase and move into your new home first, then sell your existing property. This is going to be a game changer for a lot of consumers.
The Instant Sale
Consumers want to see what an iBuyer will offer for their home. It’s even better when they can see all iBuyer offers, which zavvie provides. It doesn’t matter how many homes iBuyers are buying; They are meeting a consumer desire head-on.
Mike DelPrete, a global expert in real estate tech, notes that while Zillow bought 6,500 houses last year, 264,000 consumers requested an instant offer. Most of these offer requesters are high-intent leads, ready to sell and buy again.
Zavvie, known for pioneering a complete iBuyer solution, is now powering top brokerages’ spread of seller options, which still includes iBuying. Innovative brokerages, like zavvie sister company, 8z Real Estate in Colorado, understand the lead generation value of emboldening agents with the most selling options, as does Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices.
The Listing Concierge
The listing concierge can unlock inventory that is “stuck.” Many sellers can’t list their home for sale without making improvements, and they don’t have the funds—so no listing. A listing concierge provides a turnkey service to handle all the improvements needed, from hiring vetted contractors who make the repairs to paying for everything. The concierge gets paid at closing, and sellers don’t have to invest anything out of pocket.
The Open Market
The open market will continue to be the option most sellers choose. Brokerages are proving this with the expanded options that zavvie now features in Offer Optimizer.
The bottom line is that brokerages must offer sellers all the options, including each of these four pillars, to get a seat at the table, much less win the listing. Which ones are missing from your toolkit?
Lane Hornung is CEO and founder of Colorado-based 8z Real Estate, one of the nation’s most successful brokerages, and is CEO/co-founder of zavvie, one of the only complete iBuyer solutions for real estate brokerages.
