There are thousands of real estate data platforms available to practitioners that assist agents and brokers in simplifying workflows, improving transparency, and attracting and retaining new business. Until now, however, there has not been a consumer-facing platform that accomplishes all of the above, and more, while also providing a franchise opportunity that allows business owners to reap the financial rewards of the consumers and agents leveraging the platform.
“If someone would have said ‘I’m going to give you the exclusive rights to Dotloop or ShowingTime or Skyslope, and every agent in this area that uses any of those platforms is going to pay you a percentage every single month, that’s basically what we’re offering to the industry,” says MooveGuru CEO and Founder Scott Oakley of the company’s newly launched platform, YourHomeHub—the first proptech franchise available in real estate, according to the company.
“Never has a broker or mortgage entity ever been able to be involved on an ownership level and we decided to change that,” says Oakley.
“Scott Oakley and his MooveGuru team’s proptech franchise is an innovative offering that has identified and created a system providing real estate organizations opportunities to generate new long-term revenue streams from ancillary services, helping to augment their existing business model,” says RISMedia Founder, President and CEO John Featherston. “This is another example of innovation coming from within our own industry’s ranks!”
With YourHomeHub, the first portal that allows homeowners to manage both the financial details and physical elements of their home, consumers can monitor extensive information about their home and local market conditions, store important documents, generate accurate estimates for home repairs and find a local contractor for over 1,000 different home service categories.
What’s more, this powerful homeowner resource can be provided by a real estate professional or loan officer, as a gift to their customers at no cost to them. As part of the package, real estate professionals also receive exclusive marketing opportunities to their spheres of influence, preventing competitors from engaging with their most-coveted contacts from the dashboard.
“Our brokerage firm has been using MooveGuru since it launched,” says Greg Martin, president and managing broker of Atlanta-based ERA Sunrise Realty, who is currently leveraging the YourHomeHub franchise model.
“The value it has provided to our agent’s client relationships has been substantial, just one more reason that our firm has achieved the highest level of customer satisfaction three years in a row among any ERA real estate brokerage,” he says. “We see the additional product features and value-added services of YourHomeHub as expanding the client experience even further.”
A Consumer-Facing Product
The new platform provides consumers with several data points and resources they can leverage in their home-buying and selling process, including:
- Home Values: Home values with up-to-date market comparisons alongside homeowners’ mortgage
- Repairs: No obligation renovation calculators for the most common home updates and repairs
- Savings: Savings on common home-related expenses from local and national service providers
- Moving: White glove service helps with utility connections plus savings on movers and truck rentals
Generating Leads Automatically Via a Predictive-Behavior Platform
While consumers see the value in the platform’s transparent data, which helps inform their home-buying and selling decisions, the other side of the value proposition lands on real estate agents who now have access to a lead generation platform that leverages predictive modeling to identify buying and selling “triggers” that merit immediate follow-up so the agent can convert more business.
The average agent has 397 sphere-of-influence contacts in their system, according to the 68 back-end systems MooveGuru pulls from, including Keller Williams’ Command, Realogy’s Dash and MoxiWorks. But agents are losing significant business by not identifying which of these contacts actually plans to buy or sell real estate in the short-term.
“We are able to upload all of those sphere-of-influence contacts and give them access to YourHomeHub,” says Oakley, adding that YourHomeHub then informs agents when their contacts click on one of 28 different buying and selling triggers within the hub. These can be anything from clicking on a blog about real estate to searching for the day’s average mortgage interest rates.
“You’re really only going to click on ‘What are today’s mortgage rates?’ if one, you’re interested in refinancing your home or two, buying or selling. So that’s a selling sign,” says Oakley. “The challenge agents have is that they have 397 contacts but the average agent only does seven transactions. But statistically, 37 of are going to buy or sell a home this year.”
Once the platform identifies these opportunities, YourHomeHub immediately contacts the agent to let them know someone in their sphere of influence has clicked on a buying or selling trigger. From there, the agent can take action.
“Real estate agents generally do a poor job maintaining contact with their past clients. They get busy focusing on servicing current buyers and sellers so it’s understandable. YourHomeHub keeps our agents ‘front and center’ so that our clients won’t easily forget who provided them with great real estate service,” says Martin.
“The added bonus is that if the client performs any one of several built-in buying or selling triggers, such as reading the blog on preparing your house to sell, our agent is immediately notified that their client is considering a move,” adds Martin. “Currently, there is no good automated way to know what a past client is planning and this should increase our ability to continue our great relationship with them, which will benefit our agents with additional business from people who already like them.”
While MooveGuru does offer a free version of the product, it only identifies that a consumer has clicked on a trigger but does not clarify who did so and which trigger was selected. YourHomeHub’s paid service offers robust, actionable data.
Increasing Cash Flow by Adopting Technology That Works for You
“The average real estate brokerage makes like $150 per real estate transaction,” Oakley quips. “They can’t afford to not have ancillary revenue.”
The YourHomeHub franchise opportunity provides more than lead generation and consumer engagement. It’s a chance for brokers, lenders, title officers, MLSs and more to leverage technology that’s going to increase their wealth two-fold, through an ancillary revenue stream and the additional earnings garnered via increased closed transactions.
“We flipped the franchise model on its head,” says Oakley. “MooveGuru will be the revenue collector, accounting, customer support, product development, technology, corporate trainer—we will be everything. All the franchise has to do is market and sell this to agents. And then we actually pay the franchisee.”
According to Oakley, the money from agents choosing to leverage the platform is collected via credit card by MooveGuru, which then pays the franchisee every month.
Oakley says the platform is garnering a lot of interest from its broker and lender relationships. “Three of our first franchisees all own multiple businesses in the real estate space and are looking for another ancillary revenue stream. YourHomeHub offers this for brokerages and as a non-dues revenue source for MLSs. The potential is enormous.”
“We’ve already had 14 franchises purchased,” says Oakley of the product’s immediate success. While MooveGuru and HomeKeepr are nationwide, YourHomeHub is available to MooveGuru partners, approved for franchising in 37 states right now.
“We expect the remaining dozen or so within the next three months,” he adds.
“Commissions are being squeezed and are under tremendous competitive and potentially even legislative pressure. Brokers are scrambling to find additional revenue streams including ancillary services,” says Martin. “For us, monetizing the YourHomeHub franchise revenues is one way to bring in more income to complement our title business and mortgage MSA so that we can continue to pay our agents aggressive commission splits, yet maintain the high level of support and tools that we’ve always provided.”
YourHomeHub will officially be launching in mid-November. To learn more about a YourHomeHub franchise and available territories, please email franchise@yourhomehub.com or visit yourhomehub.com.
Liz Dominguez is RISMedia’s senior online editor. Email her your real estate news ideas to lizd@rismedia.com.
