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MoxiWorks rounds out end-to-end solution for enterprise brokerages with back office product, MoxiBalance
MoxiBalance joins MoxiWorks’ slate of products driving brokerage profitability through increased productivity
Seattle, WA (January 25, 2022) — MoxiWorks, the leading real estate technology platform, announced today the launch of their back office system, MoxiBalance. MoxiBalance is designed for brokerage leaders seeking to streamline and facilitate record-keeping in their enterprise office. MoxiBalance evolved from back office solution, Reeazily, which MoxiWorks acquired in 2021.
With the addition of MoxiBalance, MoxiWorks now offers a complete end-to-end, lead-to-close, solution for enterprise brokerages. The back office solution joins their easy-to-use suite of tools including their CMA, CRM, websites, and marketing & lead generation solutions all focused on improving and increasing productivity across the brokerage.
“MoxiBalance, formerly reeazily, was built by real estate for real estate when RE/MAX Northern Illinois needed a better system for franchise membership management, billing, and reporting,” said Senior Director of Product Management, Jim Smoak. “MoxiBalance is robust and intuitive, and fully equipped to handle complex back office reporting for enterprise brokerages of any size.”
MoxiBalance is an enterprise solution designed to be an end-to-end for brokerages. The system manages the movement of money in clear, reportable, and convenient ways to match the bustling pace of a growing membership, while providing a secure platform to manage your business. MoxiBalance provides all of the features of a robust custom records system with the flexibility of cloud-based software. This provides the best of both systems for optimal back office tech. Brokerages powered by MoxiBalance can:
- Set up multiple brands and offices and easily connect them to their ledgers
- Design templates for agent-specific commission structures
- Build out items for repeatable billing and fixed and variable costs and,
- Manage agents with the same data populating the rosters of other MoxiWorks products
Additionally, MoxiBalance is designed for strong integration with transaction management systems like DocuSign, DotLoop, or SkySlope. It offers two-way QuickBooks sync and subscription-based purchase. This allows users to manage transactions, review documents, collect earnest money deposits, and even automate and export disbursement letters and funds for closing. Easy-to-use profit/loss, drilldowns, cap tracking, and forecasting reports help to protect both businesses and individual agents.
“We understand how complex the accounting and back office process can be,” said Smoak. “Working with a product that is not only sophisticated and easy to use, but also integrates so seamlessly with your preferred transaction management system will transform your processes and improve the overall functionality of your back office.”
To learn more about MoxiBalance and how it can benefit your business, visit moxiworks.com.
About MoxiWorks
MoxiWorks is a comprehensive open platform system for large residential real estate brokerages that serves over 800 brokerages and 400,000 agents nationwide, accounting for more than 20% of the transactions in the U.S. MoxiWorks’ customer retention over the past seven years stands proudly at 97%. Their integrated tools are centered on sphere methodology that increases agents’ repeat and referral business by 54%, while lowering overall technology, training, and support costs for the brokerage. The open platform known as the MoxiCloud has tools from more than 100 partners that integrate to create unique brokerage solutions. Find more information at moxiworks.com.
MoxiWorks – Let’s sell more homes together
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For more information on this topic and other press inquiries at MoxiWorks, please contact Jordan Barrish at Jordan.barrish@moxiworks.com.
2022 Home Sales Predictor: Steady Stream of Home Sales to Kick off the New Year
It’s 2022 — time sure is flying!
Our data team is already hard at work analyzing and making predictions for the year ahead, so let’s dive right in.
We finished December with 566K home sales which were 4% more homes sold than we expected. That was a 2% increase from November, but a 3% decrease from the year before in December 2020.
Last month in our reporting we predicted a ‘Strong year of home sales on the horizon in 2022’ and we’re already seeing that come true as we look ahead to January. In any other year, we would expect to see a 20-25% decrease from December to January.
Instead in 2022, we predict we will only see a 16% decrease with 477K homes sold, which is also a 16% increase year over year.
In February we predict we will see a 4% increase from January with 496K home sales which would be a 19% increase year over year.
Source: MoxiWorks Home Sales Predictor Jan|Feb ‘22
There are several reasons we expect to see this stronger number of home sales in January, but two of the substantial factors that will drive behavior are rising interest rates and inflation.
Inflation has now increased at its fastest pace in 40 years. And, how does inflation impact home prices? Inventory and interest rates.
Last week, the Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell discussed the impact of inflation on interest rates with a Senate panel:
“But some higher prices, such as rents, could prove to be stickier. Rental costs, which have accelerated since summer, rose 0.4% in December, the third consecutive monthly increase. That’s significant because housing costs make up one-third of the government’s consumer price index.
Powell told Congress that if it becomes necessary to fight high inflation more aggressively, the Federal Reserve is prepared to accelerate the interest rate hikes it plans to begin this year. The Fed’s benchmark short-term rate, now pegged near zero, is expected to be bumped up at least three times this year.” (source)
Additionally, Altos Research has reported a few other leading indicators that are also pointing to a strong start to 2022, including immediate home sales trends and increased home prices. Their recent article on HousingWire shares more about this and how that is impacting this potential flurry of buyers at the beginning of the year.
The final piece that we think is worth keeping an eye on is how institutional buying will impact the market as financial institutions are hedging in residential real estate as it’s the least likely to go down in value.
According to a recent Bloomberg survey, 1 in 5 homes that were flipped by an iBuyer in 2021 were sold to institutional investors. With inventory already at such a low, if this trend continues, when will we see it rise again?
We’ll be watching all of this closely to see how this all plays out but based on these reports last week it appears there will likely be some shake-ups in the market this year.
Buckle up!
The Home Sales Predictor is a set of prediction data that dives into the number of presentations created and the correlated number of U.S. home sales. This data is provided by MoxiWorks with insights from their MoxiPresent product.
Get our Home Sales Predictor Monthly Report delivered to your inbox!
MoxiWorks unveils upgrades to digital advertising platform, MoxiPromote
Agents and brokers now have access to enhanced advertising across Facebook and Google with MoxiPromote
Seattle, WA – (January 11, 2022) – MoxiWorks, the leading real estate technology platform, announced today the relaunch of its digital advertising tool, MoxiPromote. MoxiPromote simplifies the sophisticated process of digital advertising, empowering brokers and agents to use lucrative marketing channels like Facebook Audience Network and Google Display Network without having to have significant expertise in these platforms.
With MoxiPromote, advertising dollars go further than with competitors. Other providers typically apply less than 20% of an agent’s budget to actual ad spend, but MoxiPromote puts the agent and their budget goals first. With every dollar spent on ads, more than 50% is applied directly to media spend on their selected channels.
Jim Smoak, MoxiWorks Senior Director of Product Management
“We know how hard you work on your business,” said MoxiWorks’ Senior Director of Product Management, Jim Smoak. “This is why we’re committed to supporting brokers and agents by not nickel and diming them, but by offering an advertising solution that gives you a bigger slice of the pie.”
MoxiPromote also keeps agents ahead of the competition by making digital marking easy for agents, saving them time and expanding their reach. The advertising tool auto-fills listing information and images by pulling up-to-date listing information from MLS feeds via the MoxiCloud and pulls agent information from the brokerage’s roster. As a result, agents can get ads up and running with just a few clicks. Agents are able to expand their sphere of influence, drive awareness to their listings, generate leads, and promote their services as a local real estate expert.
“These new upgrades to MoxiPromote will give agents an even easier to use, sleeker and more intuitive platform for advertising their listings, their offices, or themselves,” said Smoak. 
Agents can manage ads across both the Facebook Audience Network and the Google Display Network. Across these platforms, they can run lead gen ads, traffic ads, and always-on campaigns. And, as a cherry on top, MoxiWorks is recognized by Facebook as a Facebook Top Provider.
To learn more about MoxiPromote and how it can benefit your business, visit moxiworks.com.
About MoxiWorks
MoxiWorks is a comprehensive open platform system for large residential real estate brokerages that serves over 800 brokerages and 400,000 agents nationwide, accounting for more than 20% of the transactions in the U.S. MoxiWorks’ customer retention over the past seven years stands proudly at 97%. Their integrated tools are centered on sphere methodology that increases agents’ repeat and referral business by 54%, while lowering overall technology, training, and support costs for the brokerage. The open platform known as the MoxiCloud has tools from more than 100 partners that integrate to create unique brokerage solutions. Find more information at moxiworks.com.
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For more information on this topic and other press inquiries at MoxiWorks, please contact Jordan Barrish at Jordan.barrish@moxiworks.com.
Strong year of home sales on the horizon in 2022
As we close out 2021, hopefully with our loved ones, we are taking one final look back at home sales for this year before we turn the calendar and embark on the next chapter in our industry.
2021
2021 took us on a wild ride as we got a peek at the possibility of new seasonality trends. It was also proof that people’s need for a great home to live their lives, raise their family, and now work, is resilient against almost all other things.
Since October we’ve also been predicting that we will see 6.8 million home sales this year. The last time we saw a year of higher home sales was back in 2005. It’s almost hard to believe after a year of non-stop talk about inventory shortages that the result will be a historic number of transactions.
So what does all of this mean for 2022? First, let’s take our last look at 2021.
November 2021
In November, there were 536K home sales, which was 4% more than we predicted. The result was a 6% decrease in sales from October, but a 2% increase year over year. While we historically see a 2% increase YOY as we saw in 2018 and 2019, in 2020 there was a 24% increase YOY, which means November stayed a hot month even not in the height of a pandemic.
December & January
In this final month of 2021, we predict there will be 545K home sales in December which would be a 2% increase from November. In January we predict we will start the year strong with 515K home sales, which would be a 5% decrease from December, but a 27% increase year over year.
Ringing in 2022
As we look ahead to 2022 there are a number of things to consider that will impact transactions. One of the main areas we are paying attention to is inflation, and specifically wage inflation.
As home price decelerates, wage inflation will likely increase affordability therefore causing another strong year of transactions across the country. That’s not to say that all markets will be affordable, but the wage inflation (arguably caused by corporations like Amazon setting the new standard for wages) will have an impact on new homebuyers coming on the market especially in more affordable communities.
Something else that will likely impact the rate of home sales is the Great Resignation. Coldwell Banker recently released a study that revealed the impact the Great Resignation will have on the housing market, particularly in more affordable areas of the country. Around the country workers have indicated they would take a pay decrease in order to live in a more affordable area of the country. So what will that mean for inventory and transactions?
Ultimately, we predict with the deceleration of home prices, wage inflation, and for the foreseeable future, continued low-interest rates, 2022 could be another record-breaking year for home sales.
What role do you play?
As more and more ways to buy and sell homes emerge on the market, one thing remains true – buyers and sellers need a trusted advisor. The most recent data from NAR in 2020 stated that “87% of buyers recently purchased their home through a real estate agent or broker” (source). That means 87% of home sales are dependent on all of you.
Continue to nurture your sphere. Be the first person someone thinks of when they are ready to buy or sell, or, even before they are ready. You have the power to make a difference for your clients, your community, and the industry as a whole.
See you in 2022!
The Home Sales Predictor is a set of prediction data that dives into the number of presentations created and the correlated number of U.S. home sales. This data is provided by MoxiWorks with insights from their MoxiPresent product.
Get our Home Sales Predictor Monthly Report delivered to your inbox!
MoxiWorks adds to leading suite of technology, acquires reeazily
The enterprise back-office solution will become part of the MoxiWorks slate of products driving brokerage profitability through higher productivity
SEATTLE, Wa. (Oct 22, 2021) – MoxiWorks, the leading real estate technology platform, announced today they have acquired reeazily, an enterprise back-office solution that helps manage real estate transactions across the entire real estate organization. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Reeazily, like MoxiWorks, was born out of real estate for real estate. The company was founded in 2005 out of the need to develop a better system for franchise membership management, billing, and reporting for their clients at RE/MAX Northern Illinois. Over the last 16 years they have continued to evolve and enhance their products. Now, on its fourth generation, reeazily includes a complete brokerage back-office solution, broker.ez®, which integrates QuickBooks Online for accounting. Reeazily also integrates with DocuSign, SkySlope and Dotloop for transaction document management, all of which are existing partners in MoxiWorks’ MoxiCloud Partner Program.
“We are so thrilled to welcome not only the reeazily products into the MoxiWorks universe, but the whole reeazily community,” said York Baur, CEO MoxiWorks. “reeazily has been a partner in our MoxiCloud partner program for over three years and we’re excited to expand our product offering as we integrate them fully into our products.”
The entire reeazily team will be joining MoxiWorks and will become Moxians. reeazily CSO and co-founder Casey Reagan, will stay on board as MoxiWorks’ Director of Product Management for back-office solutions, helping to drive innovation.
“We recognized a common focus on client service and drive to get things done at MoxiWorks,” said Reagan. “That drive made it clear there is amazing synergy and that the Moxi culture was an amazing fit for us. We are excited to join the team.”
Reeazily products will add to MoxiWorks’ array of solutions including MoxiWorks’ sphere-based CRM, MoxiEngage, leading CMA interactive presentation product, MoxiPresent, as well as their recruiting system, MoxiTalent, marketing suite, MoxiImpress and websites platform, MoxiWebsites alongside their renowned MoxiCloud open platform.
MoxiWorks acquired marketing automation platform, Imprev in November of 2019 which has expanded MoxiWorks’ marketing offering, MoxiImpress, powering agent marketing efforts though the complete automation of listing materials.
As for future acquisitions, Baur shared, “We plan to continue to help consolidate the highly fragmented real estate tech market as the industry matures. We are highly selective and believe it’s important to keep the long-term interests of the residential real estate brokerage to heart. We will look for acquisitions that help further that cause and reinforce the amazing customer loyalty that MoxiWorks enjoys as a result of great products on an open platform, backed up by great support.”
About MoxiWorks
MoxiWorks is a comprehensive open platform system for large residential real estate brokerages that serves over 800 brokerages and 400,000 agents nationwide, accounting for more than 20% of the transactions in the U.S. MoxiWorks’ customer retention over the past seven years stands proudly at 97%. Their integrated tools are centered on sphere methodology that increases agents’ repeat and referral business by 54%, while lowering overall technology, training, and support costs for the brokerage. The open platform known as the MoxiCloud has tools from more than 100 partners that integrate to create unique brokerage solutions. Find more information at moxiworks.com.
About reeazily
Created as a solution for RE/MAX Northern Illinois in 2005 to manage their franchisor operation, it supported a network of independent offices closing with as much as $380 million in commission. reeazily was spun off in 2018 to focus on delivering better brokerage and franchise systems. reeazily is closing thousands of transactions monthly from coast to coast.
MoxiWorks – Let’s sell more homes together
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For more information on this topic and other press inquiries at MoxiWorks, please contact Jordan Barrish at Jordan.barrish@moxiworks.com.
*Press release originally appeared on PRNewswire.
What Seasonality? Home Sales Hold Strong
Summer is winding down in many parts of the country. Kids are going back to school while professionals head back to the daily grind. One thing not winding down? Home sales.
There were nearly 600K homes sold in July with 591K home sales, meaning our prediction was within 1%. While that is a 10% decrease in home sales from June to July and a 4% decrease YOY that is still a very strong month of home sales and it looks like it should stay steady over the next few months, really just throwing our usual seasonality for a loop.
So, what’s ahead for August and September?
Predictions
Based on activity inside our MoxiWorks products we predict there will be a 2% increase in home sales in August with 601K homes sold followed by a 10% decrease in September with 538K home sales.
While that would mean a 9% decrease for September YOY, when comparing it to a more normal year like 2018 or 2019 that’s a 27% and 17% increase respectively for this time of year which definitely points to this wonky year of home sales continuing.
So, what about home prices?
The big thing we’ve been talking about around the virtual MoxiWorks lunch table this past month is less about the waning inventory (even though that is of course still a concern) and more about current home prices and interest rates. Interest rates are still at a record low, but, at some point, they will start to increase again as economic principles come into play. Until that happens this will remain a seller’s market with record breaking home prices that are spooking buyers. Because these buyers are spooked another thing we are keeping our eye on is the increase in non-traditional home buying, i.e. iBuyers. Needless to say, there’s a lot happening and it will be interesting to see what these changes mean in the coming months. So how can you and your agents be ready?
Fall & Covid-19
We are of course not ignoring the Delta variant and what that might mean for the Fall and Winter months of home sales, but for now, our message remains the same. Protect yourself and your agents from whatever is coming our way by staying in flow with your sphere. Keep working for your future by staying in flow with your sphere now. If the last 16 months have taught us anything it’s that things can change at a breakneck pace and you don’t want to be left wishing you had kept your book of business fresh, nurtured and full of your future leads.
Until next month.
Hot housing market, with no indication of a cool down, for now.
In last month’s Home Sales Predictor article we said –
“Only time will tell if this flattening trend will continue or if we will see a spike later this year. Many of our clients have shared with us they are starting to see more listings in their area so maybe we will still see a spike? What trends are you seeing? Do you think we’ve seen the peak?”
And, it appears the flattening has not happened yet. In June there were a record-breaking 636K homes sold across the US. That’s 6% higher than our prediction and 24% higher year-over-year. In fact, that is the most homes sold in a month that we have seen since we started tracking this data back in 2016.
July/August Predictions
Looking ahead it appears the market will remain hot with a brief slow down expected for July (which is a historical trend) with 587K home sales. That would be an 8% decrease from June and a 4% decrease YOY. We then expect the market to pick right back up to 601K in August. If our prediction holds true that would be a 2% increase from July and a 3% increase YOY.
When talking with our data team this month about the Home Sales Predictor one thing we all agreed on was the fact that this is a weird housing market that really feels like the tip of a lot of interesting things happening in the world right now.
Especially for us here in the Pacific Northwest. We’ve been living in a market that was mostly closed for the last 15 months, it’s been shocking to see how much has changed in the last two. And, especially in the housing market. A lot has been unpredictable and while we are confident in the data at our fingertips, time will only tell how much wackier this market may get.
Institutions vs. Homebuyers
Things are starting to look up in the economy as we return to work, travel and entertainment. There are even signs things may change for the better in terms of the housing inventory as lumber prices start to stabilize and housing starts will finally be reviving, but we still have an uphill battle to climb as more and more millennials aim to get into the homeownership game.
One of the biggest things at play that we are focusing in on is how much institutional buying is putting pressure on the already shrinking existing home inventory. We’ve been talking for months about the listings shortage vs. inventory shortage, but new data is causing us to take another look when an already pressured consumer market is seeing more pressure from the resurgence of the iBuyers (more on that below) and this further immergence of the institutional buyers that are buying homes and taking them off the market by turning them into rentals.
According to a recent Redfin report investors spent a record $77 billion on homes over the past six months compared to the $55 billion that was spent in the second and third quarters of 2020. That’s 1 of every 7 U.S. homes in the first quarter where in the previous three quarters investor bought closer to 1 in 10 homes (Source: HousingWire).
That same report shared that “Most [investors] focused on single-family homes, which made up the biggest share of acquisitions and first-quarter growth, year over year. Nearly 39,000 of the 55,000 homes investors bought in Q1 were single-family properties, up 4.8% from last year” and that among those buyers were Invitation Homes and American Homes 4 Rent, both “single-family-rental behemoths.” (source: The Real Deal)
So while concerns have been flying around about the resurgence of iBuyers it’s important to note that iBuyers are still only roughly 50% of the way back to their pre-pandemic levels with only 4,383 homes purchased in Q1 of 2021 and only account for 0.5% of homes sold across the U.S. making them nowhere near an immediate threat to our housing shortage.
What does the future hold?
The market will likely continue at this velocity, but the concerns around intuitional buyers squeezing our inventory opportunities will remain top of mind. Especially for how it can disproportionately impact the lower and middle class and especially for minorities who oftentimes lack the generational wealth to get their foot in the door, especially in a crazy market like this one.
And it’s not a great sign when, according to HousingWire “investors gobbled up the largest share of lower-priced homes in the first quarter…One of every five low-priced homes that sold in the U.S. (20.8%) was purchased by an investor, compared to 12.5% of high-priced homes and 11.3% of mid-priced homes.”
So, what can you do?
Use your power as a real estate professional to help overrepresent the underrepresented. Try and focus on building your sphere with families to help get them into homes and start building wealth and generating more opportunities for future growth. The more we can build diverse communities the better for society and the better for our future as an industry. Look for the opportunities to make positive change in your community while making sure all the homes on our street aren’t bought up by investors. Be that valuable resource for all of your contacts in your sphere and educate them on the benefits of buying and selling a home in their market to help continue to foster movement and transactions across the industry.
Sources:
- https://therealdeal.com/2021/05/21/institutional-buyers-are-flooding-single-family-market/
- https://www.housingwire.com/articles/investors-are-buying-up-single-family-homes-across-the-us/
- https://www.redfin.com/news/ibuyer-real-estate-q1-2021/
- https://www.vox.com/recode/22407667/home-sales-boom-rent-housing-single-family-rental
- https://www.wsj.com/articles/lumber-prices-are-way-downbut-dont-expect-new-houses-to-cost-less-11626260401
The Home Sales Predictor is a brand-new set of prediction data that dives into the number of presentations created and the correlated number of U.S. home sales. This data is provided by MoxiWorks with insights from their MoxiPresent product.
Get our Home Sales Predictor Monthly Report delivered to your inbox!
MoxiWorks Announces New Scheduling Tool Partner through Instashowing Bringing Agents a Fast and Effective Solution
Agents gain access to Instashowing’s platform making it easier than ever before to schedule and manage showings
Key Takeaways:
- MoxiWorks’ new partnership with Instashowing brings its users direct access to Instashowing’s listing appointment scheduling platform.
- The new partnership will make Instashowing’s platform available to MoxiWork’s 400,000+ users.
- Access to Instashowing will streamline scheduling, allowing agents to focus more on thriving in today’s red hot market.
(Seattle, WA) – MoxiWorks, the leading real estate technology platform, announced today a new partnership with Instashowing, a technology platform specializing in listing appointment scheduling. This partnership will centralize key parts of the listing agent workflow in MoxiWorks platform and will be in effect and available to MoxiWorks’ 400,000 users as of June 16, 2021.
“Showings are a critical part of a listing agent’s business and bringing this product inside agent’s favorite platforms such as MoxiWorks will make the entire experience seamless,” said William Schoeffler, Founder of Instashowing. “The best agents have used multiple apps to manage their business and we’re excited to see the deeper integrations making agents’ lives more seamless. We were attracted to the open platform approach MoxiWorks stands for and this is exactly what we are doing with our open showing API.”
Through this new partnership, MoxiWorks users will gain access to Instashowing’s unique platform that will be automatically available when a user creates a new listing. Seller’s agents will be able to add their sellers to a portal so they can control when their home is shown and get property feedback directly. Additionally, both the agents and seller can conveniently manage the appointments and available times within their calendar.
This partnership will empower agents to capture more leads from qualified prospects as they book showings on agent and brokerage websites.
“The MoxiWorks team is excited to partner with Instashowing and to give our users access to their platform. This partnership will streamline the scheduling process for our users, cutting the time usually spent on scheduling in half,” says Krista Thomsen, MoxiWorks’ Senior Manager, Partnerships & Integrations. “By offering our users a tool to make scheduling easier, they will have more time to focus on helping home shoppers in today’s competitive market.”
To learn more about this integration and how it can benefit your business, visit moxiworks.com and Instashowing.com.
About Instashowing
Instashowing is a technology platform specializing in listing appointment scheduling that simplifies the scheduling process for agents. Founded in 2018, this online real estate tool is designed to help agents easily schedule home showings. Instashowing has made the booking process easier and more integrated with the platforms agents are currently using. Find more information at instashowing.com.
About MoxiWorks
MoxiWorks is a comprehensive open platform system for large residential real estate brokerages that serves over 800 brokerages and more than 400,000 agents nationwide that account for more than 20% of the transactions in the U.S. MoxiWorks’ customer retention over the past seven years stands proudly at 96%. Their integrated tools are centered on sphere methodology that increases agents’ repeat and referral business by 54%, while lowering overall technology, training, and support costs for the brokerage. The open platform known as the MoxiCloud has tools from more than 100 partners that integrate to create unique brokerage solutions. Find more information at moxiworks.com.
MoxiWorks – Let’s sell more homes together
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For more information on this topic and other press inquiries at MoxiWorks, please contact Jordan Barrish at Jordan.barrish@moxiworks.com.
Strong Spring Season of Real Estate Transactions Ahead
Real estate and Spring have historically had a strong relationship. Just like Mother Nature, each Spring we all come out of our pseudo-hibernation, fresh and energized (maybe we aren’t feeling as fresh this Spring after almost a year of psuedo-hibernation, but I digress). Based on the trends we are seeing this Spring season of real estate transactions is poised to be a stellar showing.
But, before we get to that, let’s take a quick look at what happened in February.
The Wild Winter Storms of February
Last month we predicted there would be 384K US home sales and we ended up very close with 383K US home sales. This means our prediction was within 0.03% of the total number of homes sold in February.
Overall this ended up being a 1% decrease in the number of home sales month over month from January but was still a 13% increase year over year compared to the number of home sales in February of 2020 (which was just before the pandemic started in the US).
While we typically see an increase in home sales between January and February we aren’t concerned about this 1% decrease since it was actually a drastic increase from the 31% decrease in home sales we saw month over month in January.
And, we also have to remember that February was an intense month full of unpredictable Winter weather across the entire country. Texas saw historic low temperatures that had thousands of people without electricity or potable water for days on end just to name one of the drastic storms and its impact.
But as we said Spring is strong and we are seeing a strong climb in our predictions, even with the tight inventory squeeze.
March & April Home Sales Prediction
Looking at the predictions we expect to see a 26% increase month over month of home sales in March with 483K home sales. This might sound like a huge jump, but even in 2020 there was a 24% increase month over month between February and March so this is right in line with the Spring season in the real estate market.
As we look to April and the one-year anniversary of the pandemic begins to set in across the nation, we predict we will see a 46% increase YOY for the number of home sales APR with 532K home sales.
We all remember what it felt like a year ago. When things shut down. Life became completely uncertain and that dip in April and May home sales had us all wondering what would happen to the housing market.
Thankfully as we all know that dip didn’t last for long, and I think it’s important to take a moment and recall the absolute resiliency this industry showed.
Now a year later in April of 2021 things may still be teetering on uncertainty but the good news is there is a lot of hope on the horizon.
Just this week it was announced that all adults in the US will be eligible for the vaccine by May 1st and $1.9 trillion dollars is rolling into the economy. Things are happening that are going to stimulate the economy, save more lives and help people get back to some sort of normalcy.
As we inch back close to some sort of “normal” and life becomes a little less uncertain people are going to become more comfortable making more and more decisions with some certainty about buying or selling their homes.
So, now is the time.
Pick up the phone. Get in touch with your sphere. The inventory is out there.
Cheers to a prosperous Spring for all!
The Home Sales Predictor is a brand-new set of prediction data that dives into the number of presentations created and the correlated number of U.S. home sales. This data is provided by MoxiWorks with insights from their MoxiPresent product.
Get our Home Sales Predictor Monthly Report delivered to your inbox!
Strategic Success for Brokerages Adopting Open Technology Platforms
(Image source: RealScout) Case study originally appeared on RealScout.com.*
Long & Foster Real Estate and Intero Real Estate Services’ decision to work with open-architecture tech MoxiWorks and RealScout pays dividends.
Technology is too often a headache for real estate brokerages, rife with buyer’s remorse, implementation disasters, and chronic low agent and consumer adoption. This directly contradicts the purpose of introducing new technology platforms to a business, yet it’s a story that’s far too common.
Two brokerages, Long & Foster Real Estate, a dominant brokerage in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, and Intero Real Estate Services, a similarly market-leading brokerage in the San Francisco Bay Area, avoided these issues, in part, by partnering with technology companies committed to an open ecosystem.
An open tech platform is one that champions the idea that relevant software platforms should work seamlessly with one another, and data should move freely as the customer wants. A closed tech platform, either in the name of an “all-inclusive” approach or even competitive considerations, creates barriers that prevent seamless feature integrations and data transportability.
Strategically, both Long & Foster and Intero Real Estate Services recognized the value of open ecosystems, and they have made technology procurement decisions accordingly. No two tech companies better represent the success of this strategy than MoxiWorks, the leading real estate technology system with the first and only true open network platform, and RealScout, the leading solution for brokerages and agents to generate more business from their “sphere of influence.”
Both MoxiWorks and RealScout have designed their platforms from the bottom-up to enable integrations with 3rd party technologies and transportability of customer-owned data. Customers that adopt either MoxiWorks or RealScout, and especially those who have adopted both solutions, have reaped the benefits of partnering with open platforms.
- Simple, minimally disruptive implementation
Although some heavy-lifting is inevitable, open platforms like MoxiWorks and RealScout are best equipped to provide a seamless transition for both admins and users alike. When Long & Foster adopted MoxiWorks, MoxiWorks’ dedicated account management team developed a customized plan for implementation and training, leading to a smooth and successful onboarding process. Later, when Long & Foster adopted RealScout, thanks to the open 2-way integration between the 2 vendors, implementation was as simple as setting up a roster sync between MoxiWorks and RealScout, which automatically provisioned accounts, set-up basic profiles, and provided for automated maintenance of the accounts.
The positive effects of an easy implementation can be seen in overall cost reductions, higher adoption, and better user account management through integrated tools.
- Increased user value from feature interoperability
Like most markets, agents at Intero generate a vast majority of their business via their “sphere of influence.” Engaging this audience is a multi-faceted effort that requires both CRM functionality as well as client collaboration functionality. Although all-inclusive solutions exist, MoxiWorks and RealScout are best-in-class solutions in their respective category. Thanks to their open platforms, instead of compromising on a particular solution, Intero could simply use both.
With MoxiEngage as the central source of client records, agents can easily SSO into RealScout to collaborate and convert their agents, knowing that incremental data is synced back into MoxiEngage. This seamless experience not only increases productivity for agents, it means clients receive more consistent and attentive customer service.
- Opportunities created by data transportability
It’s no secret that every agent, team, and even office have their own operational playbook, and especially for a brokerage as large and diverse as Long & Foster, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. One of the core benefits of an open-platform approach is the ability for it to accommodate a variety of lead-sources, marketing tools, and reporting outputs.
For Long & Foster, this means that MoxiWorks and RealScout, either directly or by pass-through, are connected with systems as diverse as: Zillow Connect, Realtor.com, Spacio, Buyside, ActivePipe, and more. This ability to accommodate a diversity of tools allows brokerages to empower their agents without reducing flexibility.
- Inherent future-proofing
One of the key concerns many brokerages have about technology procurement is the speed with which technology becomes outdated. Even the most cutting-edge systems, without constant iterations, can get left behind by more innovative companies.
The benefit of partnering with open platforms is that by integrating with innovative 3rd parties, brokerages can ensure that they aren’t getting left behind. Users, data, and workflows can be adapted to work with the latest tools, without completely abandoning legacy systems. Furthermore, since open platform companies can’t rely on high switching costs for customer loyalty, they continue to compete on innovation and value-delivery, as evidenced by both MoxiWorks’ and RealScout’s rapidly evolving offerings.
“Being an all-inclusive solution is never going to truly give a brokerage everything they need,” said York Baur, CEO of MoxiWorks. “This is why we decided early on that having a platform that lets our customers plugin the best solutions would be the ultimate route to success for each brokerage’s unique needs. RealScout is a great example of a great long-term partner that continues to help us fulfill the promise of this open platform strategy.”
RealScout Co-Founder and President Andrew Flachner added, “We share a strong conviction with MoxiWorks that brokerages should have meaningful control over their tech tools and data. While a walled-garden architecture might offer control, only when users and data can move freely between various platforms of choice, does control generate value. Our partnership with MoxiWorks exemplifies how brokerages are empowering their agents, clients, and themselves by building strategic value around their sphere of influence and data.”
The benefits discussed above are some of the most basic ones that brokerages, agents, and clients experience by partnering with open tech platforms. By rejecting the notion that software generates long-term value by locking-in their customers, open platforms empower their customers by embracing a diverse set of tools, users, and the opportunities they create.
For these reasons, Long & Foster and Intero’s decision to build their technology offering around MoxiWorks and RealScout was not only a tactical win driven by the immediate benefits of the two solutions but a strategic one that will continue to pay dividends in the future as the platforms continue to integrate and innovate, through open, transparent partnerships.
