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Case Study: Star Real Estate Streamlines Their Team With MoxiWorks
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Diane van der Goes, director of Recruiting, Marketing and Corporate Strategy for Star Real Estate in Fountain Valley, Calif., grew up in the real estate business; her mother was an agent, and van der Goes earned her childhood allowance by helping her mother farm for clients, wheeling a wagon around prospective neighborhoods and dropping pumpkins door-to-door.
Wagon wheels aside, van der Goes herself entered the real estate game in 2001. With a literal lifetime of industry experience, van der Goes is no stranger to the complexities of the business; she understands how important it is to keep a team running on the same pulse.
Earlier this year, she introduced her team to Moxi Works, an open platform connecting agents with their brokerage systems in an effort to streamline communication and business strategies, as well as place a suite of best-in-class tools in one location with one log-in.
Is Amazon Going to Lower Your Leads Cost?
By Tiana Baur
“Alexa, find me the best real estate agent for our neighborhood.” Another giant might be joining the real estate industry madness with Google and Facebook, providing more referrals and lead generation to real estate agents. An Amazon placeholder page was discovered, which has since been removed, that gave people the option to “Hire a Realtor.”
The webpage was found in their Home and Business Services section, which is a newly rolled out vendor marketplace. According to Inman, “If the marketplace works for agents like it does for other professionals, then agents would pay referral fees to Amazon in exchange for new business. Amazon did not respond to a request for comment.” The general public can already hire home inspectors and interior designers via the marketplace, so adding real estate agents to the vendor list actually makes a lot of sense.
Image source: Inman News
Reviews, Reviews, More Reviews
Amazon is review rich. It’s what makes buying from them easy and painless. Like everything else with them, their Home and Business Services section also has reviews for their vendors, meaning that real estate agent reviews might have yet another place to live. Instead of agents asking for reviews, they might start receiving them unprompted.
Move Over, Zillow
If Amazon really is going to get into the lead generation game, this agent referral page might be able to create extremely strong leads, meaning more competition for Zillow, making leads more affordable across the board. In fact, according to GeekWire, “When reports of the Amazon page surfaced, Zillow’s stock price slumped from $46.15 a share to $44.54.” They also declined to comment on the surfacing of this new service.
York Baur, CEO of MoxiWorks, said, “Monopolies are never good and competition is the antidote. If anyone can give Zillow a run for their money, it’s Amazon, and knowing them they’ll be incredibly price competitive.”
Plus, let’s face it: Amazon finds ways to make everything more affordable. Even on Thanksgiving, they were able to provide turkeys at a lower price at Whole Foods (the used-to-be most unaffordable way to buy groceries) since they recently acquired the company.
The future of real estate in general could get a lot more exciting and fun with Amazon in the mix. Actually, Amazon might just take over the world – and we’re kind of excited to watch them do it. “Hey Alexa, close this transaction for me.”
How to Work Through Zestimates
By Tiana Baur
Zestimates. Clients love them, yet they are largely the bane of the real estate business as a whole. In theory, they sound amazing, but the problem is that they’re often horrifically inaccurate, leaving homeowners upset and agents anxious. In fact, the median error rate of Zestimates is 5 percent. That may sound menial as a percentage, but when computed with the median home sales prices, it can be tens of thousands of dollars lost to the bottom line, and that’s if you’re lucky. According to the Washington Post, “Zestimates are within 5 percent of the sale price 53.9 percent of the time, within 10 percent 75.6 percent of the time and within 20 percent 89.7 percent of the time, Zillow claims.” So, unless luck is on your side, that 5 percent is likely to grow.
Wouldn’t it be nice to showcase the Zestimate inaccuracy to your clients?
Our CMA presentation tool, Moxi Present, encapsulates the relevant information about a house and enables you, a professional agent, to consult and advise clients with accurate information, and information that can give true context to a Zestimate. It does this by showcasing what the Zestimate was on all selected comparable properties to your current listing versus what they actually sold for. Here is an example of Moxi Present at work.
You are not an algorithm, don’t get treated like one.
Have you ever been sick or not feeling well and tried to look up what your symptoms mean online? If you have, chances are you panicked when the results came up because it eluded to you probably having a horrible flesh-eating disease (even though you just have a flu that’s going around). My point is, when you’re talking about your health, you go see a doctor, a professional doctor. When you’re trying to sell your home, you might take a peek online beforehand, but in the end, you want and need a professional’s advice.
Remember, Zestimates are a computer algorithm. You, the real estate agent, have access to a wealth of data when using modern tools (like Moxi Present) that go well beyond what some computer algorithm is using. You also have access to things that no algorithm can. Let that sink in for a moment. Zestimates can’t see the details of the home’s interior or know the character and culture of a specific neighborhood. As their agent, you are their trusted advisor, the professional.
Find out more about this industry-leading CMA and presentation tool here and why agent’s that used it in 2016 did 43% more business than those that didn’t.
Will Redfin’s Giant Team Take Your Market Share?
By Tiana Baur
Redfin’s stock dropped 5.45 percent last week when Compass announced their plan of world domination. Although, it was primarily due to their poor Q3 earnings release, falling short of analyst estimates, and we’ll go ahead and mention the fact they currently only serve 0.71 percent of the U.S. housing market… BUT they’re still Redfin. They’re still a shark in a sea of minnows, constantly posing a threat.
In real estate, agent teams are becoming kind of a big deal. In fact, there are now 35,000 to 50,000 agent teams across the U.S., with the majority of them having two to nine team members belonging to them. These numbers are only growing, with 37 percent of teams formed one to three years ago and 26 percent of teams formed one year ago.
Working in teams is way more productive and provides additional benefits, such as:
- Extra lead generation
- Process and vision to building a bigger brand and operations that can scale
- Mentoring new agents in the market
- Collaboration and communication through the different roles
- Combining different talents and skills
- A more diversified client demography and audience
What does this have to do with Redfin? Well, they’re basically a GIANT agent team. Instead of having a bunch of independent contractors on their hands, they have agents on staff and have a website that generates lots of leads for their agents. They built a website with tons of cool, shiny technology and features to attract lots of eyeballs and leads. Sometimes, they even give leads to agents at other brokerages, like a team that generates leads and distributes them to their team members.
To quote a popular interview done with an industry influencer this past summer, “Redfin is not a brokerage; it is an agent team. Let that sink in for a moment. Redfin is not in the recruiting and retention business like 99.99% of brokerages are today. They could care less about recruiting the superstar elite agents. Redfin is in the business of helping people buy and sell homes — just like an agent team. They have employee agents who must use Redfin’s systems, must follow Redfin’s procedures, and the people they work with are not their clients, but Redfin’s clients — just like an agent team. And just like an agent team must have a superstar lead-generation lead agent, Redfin has one… in its website and mobile app.”
If you didn’t think of Redfin this way before, now might be a good time to do so. Although they had less than fruitful earnings this quarter, according to GeekWire, they have pushed out a few new products and have a new speedy offer-writing software they’re going to start rolling out in select cities called Redfin Fast Offers. So, who knows what will happen. But a powerful giant like Redfin isn’t going to give up without a fight and your market share is hardly safe in an environment where Compass, Redfin, and others are constantly brewing up their next attack.
MoxiWorks Adds CallAction to Cloud Open Platform
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE Moxi Works has added CallAction, an automated lead marketing service, to its Moxi Cloud open platform, the company recently announced.
CallAction is the only marketing automation service currently on the market that can be used with offline or online lead generation efforts to respond to inquiries from phone calls, emails and texts. Their powerful integrations bridge the gap between agents’ top of the funnel lead generation and their existing lead nurturing CRM systems for increased productivity.
What Compass Is Planning in Your Market
By Tiana Baur
Chatbots and new tech are barreling towards the industry. Everything is moving to a cloud environment. And now, Compass is coming for your market share.
The CEO of Compass, Robert Reffkin, recently announced a 2020 by 2020 plan to the company. What does that mean, you ask? A plan to expand into 10 new markets in the U.S. by 2020, and to grab 20 percent of the market share in the 20 largest U.S. cities. Casual, right? The cities they’re expanding to are: Seattle, San Diego, Phoenix, Dallas, Austin, Houston, Atlanta, Charlotte, Philadelphia, and Chicago.
Compass has now raised a whopping $325 million in capital and their success feels imminent, especially since they’re already the #4 largest brokerage in NYC, #3 in DC, and #2 in Cambridge. Not only that, but their agent count is up 500% over the past two years, now at 2,000 agents and gaining more traction every day. They have the capital to buy agents with massive signing bonuses and the funds to invest in an entirely new CRM and targeted marketing tools designed just for their agents. By the end of this year, they are projected to do 16,000 transactions, $14 billion in sales volume and $350 million in revenue, annually.
An obvious question is: Will they have a durable and lasting impact? What happens to aggressive brokerages, such as Compass, when the value proposition of a big signing bonus isn’t attractive enough for agents to make the move? Meaning, what if their culture doesn’t align with what an agent wants out of their brokerage? Pockets are deep, but might never be deep enough for the many that love the brokerage they currently call home.
In the shadow of Compass’s other recent announcement that they’re also considering an IPO, lies a sad-looking Redfin, whose stock dropped over 5% that day. The waters are rough out there right now and it’s obvious many brokerages won’t make it out of the impending storm. The reality is, few are safe. Fewer are “too big to fail.” When tech and industry are changing at such a rapid rate, it’s impossible to predict the future of winners and losers. Whether Compass is successful or becomes another Redfin, remains to be seen.
Looking to future-proof your brokerage for these massive industry changes? This is a good starting point. An open platform allows your brokerage to combat the massive technology budget Compass has with your very own unique suite of tools, in an affordable way. 2018 is right around the corner – start it off on the right foot.
Introducing: CallAction, Now Available in the Moxi Cloud
By Tiana Baur
We recently added another best-in-class tool to the Moxi Cloud! CallAction instantly responds, engages, and tracks all inbound leads for agents. With CallAction, agents never have to miss another call or email lead ever again.
CallAction is the only marketing automation service that can be used with your offline or online lead generation efforts to respond to inquiries from phone calls, emails and texts. Their powerful integrations bridge the gap between agents’ top of the funnel lead generation and their existing lead nurturing CRM systems for increased productivity.
Here is how it works:
Answer every call
Agents no longer need to worry about rushing to the phone or nervously watching a call come in during a meeting they can’t step out of. With CallAction, agents can ensure they keep ALL of their inbound leads engaged with automated responses through SMS and email.
Building agent databases
Every inbound call is saved to a secure cloud-hosted database and appended in real-time with caller information aggregated from the world’s largest consumer profile databases. It is also passed into Moxi Engage, so the leads go directly into their sales flow. From there, they can nurture the lead and show their new prospect why they are the best in the business.
Track every inbound call
Agents can instantly create a local or toll-free phone number for each of their marketing channels to automatically track every inbound call that is seamlessly routed to their phone.
“50% of buyers choose the vendor or service that responds first, according to the InsideSales.com 2014 Lead Response Report,” mentioned Mike McHenry, VP of Channels and Partnerships at MoxiWorks. “In a perfect world, every call is answered right away, the first time a lead calls an agent. But with CallAction, all missed calls are automatically responded to with CallAction’s SMS responses to guarantee the lead stays engaged. All the responses are fully customizable so the agent can keep their own voice and style.”
We’re super excited to have this company in the Moxi Cloud! When we say we only let the best-in-class tools and services into the Moxi Cloud, we mean it.
For more information on CallAction, visit callaction.co.
Relatability: A Winning Strategy for Staying Fresh
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE “Our focus is to form strategic partnerships with other cutting-edge companies that bring a dynamic arsenal of resources to our agents, and, in turn, our clients. So far in 2017, we’ve enhanced our agent dashboard to include SkySlope, Moxi Works, MoveEasy, Proxio and Spacio. And there’s more to come.”
How Going Digital Is Making Agents More Money
By Tiana Baur
What if we told you that you could be saving over $4,000 per year by going digital?
By going digital, we mean throwing out that shoebox you keep your receipts in and making it your New Year’s resolution to stick to digital when it comes to taxes. Your pocket will thank you for it and this is why.
Most agents have some sort of mile tracking app on their phones. You use it somedays, you don’t even know if it’s tracking the miles properly on others, but it’s an easy and realistic way to take advantage of write offs for your taxes. Sound familiar? We’re telling you point blank: that’s just the tip of the iceberg for business write offs and your wallet is suffering from not being proactive about all the others. It’s time to go digital.
To get specific, QuickBooks Self-Employed users find on average $4,340 in tax savings per year. When you first look at that number, it might seem big or small depending on how many sides you’re doing a year, but let’s break it down and make it a bit more tangible. That’s 87 bouquets you could be sending your clients, 44 bottles of champagne you could be toasting their new home to, 20 of these Notion home monitoring systems, four new iPhone X cell phones, or this BMW Active Hybrid e-Bike – crazy, right?! Basically, what we’re saying is, that’s a LOT of money you’re missing out on. 
Sure, the QuickBooks Self-Employed app tracks your miles, but it ALSO helps you track deductions for meals and fun, prompting you to take a quick pic of your receipt and uploading it so you can throw it away and never think about that old shoebox ever again. Really, how many coffees, meals and happy hours do you buy your clients and prospects each week? We’re guessing the number is pretty high up there. QBSE also helps you track write offs for marketing and ad spend, home office or space, desk fees, those big purchases like furniture and laptops, fees and licenses, travel and education, and tools and services. That’s a long list.
Up to this point you’ve been haphazardly trying to save paper receipts and remember where you drove when. Life as an independent contractor is stressful enough. Real estate agents hardly ever even get a weekend in! By going digital with QuickBooks Self-Employed, it will help bring a little sanity back to daily life and more money back into your business.
Start your New Year’s resolution early this year – your 2018 self will thank you for it!
This Brokerage Does Onboarding the Right Way
By Tiana Baur
Some brokerages just get it. They embrace change. They prepare; they future-proof their brokerage. And they totally rock agent onboarding. William Raveis is a shining example of just that.
William Raveis was founded in 1974, and is the No. 1 family-owned real estate company in the Northeast, and No. 9 real estate company in the country, according to REAL trends. They have 120 offices in nine states, with 4,000 agents that account for $9 billion in sales volume annually.
We recently held a webinar with RE Technology and were lucky to have a special guest, Bill Gamelli, COO at William Raveis. We asked him what drove him to MoxiWorks and he answered by saying, “When we started looking at MoxiWorks, one of the things that got me really excited and got my team really excited, was the simplicity and the open platform that MoxiWorks provided as well.” He went on to say, “The simplicity and the focus on SOI were things that were really, really important to us. And increasing the agents’ productivity.”
From our end, Daniel Bailey, Senior Account Manager at MoxiWorks, added, “The Moxi rollout at Raveis was by far one of the best rollouts I’ve participated in. The team followed the success recipe in our engagement cookbook to a tee, but really made it their own. They went the extra mile to make sure agents were prepped for launch by getting started with engage materials to build excitement though constant communication. They understood agents need extra help adopting new technology, so the rollout team lead by the COO himself visited every office in their org to make sure agents were trained and ready to go! Not only that, they invested in other tech to help agents get their databases into Engage without the headache.”
The Raveis launch was carefully coordinated on both ends, but what made it so smooth, was their step-by-step training program. Brokerages can give their agents tools, but if they don’t train them, the adoption rate is low and the ROI is nonexistent. We’re lucky at MoxiWorks to have clients like Raveis that understand the importance of onboarding their agents the right way.
So, did the simplicity factor of Moxi and training agents pay off? Bill said, “Getting agents to understand the power and simplicity of what MoxiWorks does, creates an adoption rate that far surpasses our expectations. As of September, we had already reached our adoption rate that we had hoped for by year end. The simplicity factor is critically important.”
Raveis also understands the importance of keeping up with technology and embracing technology that has an open platform with an API that allows the pieces of their ecosystem to share data with one another. Bill said, “When you talk about the future, much of what we’re doing now is to look at how we can integrate other technologies as well. Let’s face it, we have suffered in this industry with disbarred data sets.”
