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MoxiWorks continues to grow open platform through their partner program with new partners and deeper integrations
In an effort to build a faster and easier real estate experience, MoxiWorks continues to grow and evolve their MoxiCloud offering to help brokerages and their agents thrive
Seattle, WA (September 22, 2022) – MoxiWorks, the leading real estate technology platform, announced recent updates to their open platform, also known as the MoxiCloud, by welcoming a deeper integration with Union Street Media and MoveEasy and ushering in a new face to the partner network with Honely.
The MoxiCloud is the industry’s first and only truly open platform allowing brokerages to build the tech stack that is right for them. With more than 150 partners MoxiWorks is continuously working to bring more integrations and new partners to give brokerages choice when building their tech stack.
“We believe every brokerage should have the power to plug and play the solutions they want, to build the tech stack that will meet their needs and the needs of their agents,” said MoxiWorks COO, Jim Crisera. “We are thrilled to be deepening our integration with Union Street Media and MoveEasy, two long-time MoxiCloud partners, and we’re excited to welcome Honely into the fold. The more high-quality integrations and partners we can add to the mix, the better for the industry as a whole.”
Union Street Media provides full-service digital marketing and website solutions for real estate brokerages, teams and agents. They have been part of the MoxiCloud for more than 4 years and have worked to deepen their integration to offer MoxiWorks brokerages customized solutions that allow them to compete in an ever-changing market.
“We’ve found that brokerages and teams simply want more,” said Ted Adler, Founder & President. “Union Street Media and MoxiWorks’s reimagined partnership combines custom digital marketing solutions and award-winning websites with best-in-class tools for a true lead to close solution. When a brokerage really wants to stand out and be more profitable Union Street Media and MoxiWorks are a perfect match.”
MoveEasy’s mission is to take all the overwhelming and stressful moments of being a homeowner and make them easy through technology and the support of a personal assistant.
“As a long-standing partner, MoveEasy has a shared focus and vision with MoxiWorks around empowering real estate agents to build lifelong client relationships,” said MoveEasy CEO Venkatesh Ganapathy. “Now we’re thrilled to further expand on our partnership with one of the deepest integrations with MoxiEngage in the industry. Brokers who use MoxiWorks to nurture sales leads can now access MoveEasy’s industry-leading moving and home management platform. Agents can engage with their entire sphere of influence and deliver unprecedented value to current and past clients as well as prospects, creating stronger engagement, loyalty, and referrals.”
Honely harnesses the transformative power of predictive analytics to deliver real estate data analysis instantaneously to investors and home buyers alike.
“Honely is excited to partner with MoxiWorks and begin assisting their impressive network of agents. Honely offers a unique, effective, and low-cost tool for capturing buyer and seller leads organically rather than overpaying.”
To learn more about how the MoxiCloud can help your brokerage visit https://moxiworks.com/how-it-works. Interested in becoming part of the open network? Check out 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.
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MoxiWorks Announces New Homeownership Portal Aimed to Help Real Estate Professionals Boost Loyalty and Win Customers for Life
The portal will empower agents to stay in flow with clients throughout the entirety of their homeownership lifecycle with real-time guidance, relevant advice, and local resources; curated by each brokerage and personalized by agents
SEATTLE, WA (May 4, 2022) — MoxiWorks, the real estate industry’s leading technology platform for real estate brokerages, announced today a homeownership portal that will complement their robust suite of solutions to help brokers and their agents sell more homes. The portal will be a one-stop shop for homeowners.
Real estate professionals will be able to guide their clients to buy, sell, move and manage their home throughout the lifetime of their homeownership. This will include dedicated transaction portals where a buyer or seller can collaborate with their real estate agent, mortgage broker, insurance agent, and anyone else supporting the transaction process. The portal will also connect directly to a brokerage’s existing tech stack and is designed to provide a comprehensive and personalized customer experience throughout the transaction and homeownership journey for everyone involved.
“We built the MoxiWorks suite of products around sphere methodology,” said York Baur, MoxiWorks CEO. “The power of your sphere over cold leads is unmatched. The industry has been asking for a one-stop-shop and we’re excited to create something that will make it easy, automated, and accessible for both the real estate professionals using it as well as their clients.”
With the MoxiWorks homeownership portal, agents can collaborate with clients in a personalized space and connect them with other expert resources in their communities like loan officers, inspectors, or other services.
“This offering not only preserves the relationships between brokers and agents, and agents and clients, but it also helps maintain those relationships at scale,” said Baur. “The average real estate agent on MoxiWorks’ platform has 400 relationships they continuously nurture. Being able to have close, personalized interactions with that many contacts, over the lifetime of homeownership, will be a game-changer.”
The homeowner portal will be powered by Milestones Labs, a pioneer in digital customer experience. This portal will bring together a team of experts, from brokers and agents to ancillary services like title and mortgage. These custom portals are tailored specifically to the customer and nudge them through the necessary tasks while eliminating all the noise from others in our industry. A portal can be automatically spun up for a buyer client, sellers, or just contacts wanting to maintain their property for the long haul.
“We are thrilled to partner with MoxiWorks to serve the evolving needs of the real estate community,” said Dustin Gray, Milestones CEO. “MoxiWorks has a proven track record delivering powerful technology at scale while remaining steadfast in its mission to help industry professionals thrive. Together, we will help brokerages serve the next generation of homeowners – by leveraging technology to deliver personalized client service before, during, and after the transaction.”
To learn more and join the waitlist, visit moxiworks.com.
About MoxiWorks
MoxiWorks is a comprehensive open platform system for 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 150 partners that integrate to create unique brokerage solutions.
MoxiWorks – Let’s sell more homes together
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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!
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!
Our Growth Leads to Your Value: A letter to MoxiWorks customers
Dear customers,
There’s increasingly more horsepower behind the rate of innovation and growth of our offerings here at MoxiWorks and we’re thrilled to share the benefits of that growth with our customers aka you. With your support, we continue to push progress of the industry as a whole with our suite of products and services we offer. And as we grow, our focus remains to provide continued benefit to you, our customers as we innovate and establish new integrated partnerships.
From Open Platform to Open House
We believe that no two brokerages are alike, which is why we’ve built the industry’s only true open platform, which gives you – the broker – the power of choice. Working with a truly open platform means even though you and other companies may have the same tech partner in us, you’re still able to provide unique value to your agents. Each brokerage has the ability to mix your own unique cocktail of technology and fill it with your own unique content and branding geared at a specific market, which drives the success of your agents and enables you to advance your value proposition and stand out in your market. This allows you to grow your technology strategy along with your company and we’re right there with you along the way.
All our customers have access to the same SaaS products and open platform that we have created. Therefore, adding new customers means added revenue, allowing us to expand our ability to build and enhance those products, benefitting all customers equally. It’s a win-win situation for all.
Getting Faster, Better, Stronger Together
Yes, bringing on new customers means we had to grow our team and we’re proud to say we’ve increased the number of full-time Moxians by 25% since the beginning of the year – we’ve already hired 35 new employees so far – and we continue to bring on talent across all functions of the organization. The result is that we’re more capable than ever for all our customers, you included.
The MoxiWorks philosophy has always been rooted in driving the industry forward through collaborative investment in innovation and that only continues to strengthen. Our initial investors/customers: Windermere, Long & Foster, Howard Hanna helped fuel our growth strategy to get us where we are today and continue to push us to where we can get tomorrow. Along with over 150 integrated partnerships and new innovative product offerings, we are bringing the benefit back to you, our customers every day.
We look forward to continuing to support each and every one of our customers in a unique way that drives their business forward. Let’s sell more homes together.
Regards,
York
Find a Partner – Not Just a Tech Vendor
It happens too often … brokers come to us frustrated and exhausted, stuck in a contract with a tech vendor that promised them the world but fell short. Even if their technology is cutting it, they aren’t getting the service they need or deserve. Technology companies often see themselves as vendors rather than true partners to their clients.
That’s not the case at MoxiWorks.
Customer service is deeply rooted in how we operate. People expect good customer service, remember excellent customer service, and never forget terrible customer service. We understand that it is fundamental to ensuring that our clients are long-term, successful customers of ours. That is why at MoxiWorks, your success is our success.
Success with MoxiWorks
The two largest groups that ensure our clients are successful are our Account Management and Customer Success teams. The Account Management team is our client’s main point of contact and trusted business advisors, providing valuable guidance and support for our suite of tools and partner services. They gain an understanding of our client’s organization, their business drivers, and their service needs, providing a delivery plan that ensures their success with MoxiWorks’ suite of services. The Customer Success team is responsible for ensuring that our clients are wildly successful while using MoxiWorks. They offer several different channels for clients to get assistance including chat, scheduled call, email and help center.
Said best by our Manager of Customer Success and well-seasoned MoxiWorks employee, Nathan Losch, “Our team can help MoxiWorks users maximize the effectiveness of our products, increase adoption of the technology, and reduce the number of users who abandon the technology.”
Our Philosophy Behind Customer Service
Nathan explains that “MoxiWorks wants every interaction with our team to have the result of the requester being in a better situation than before contacting us. Maybe that means coaching on how to use the product. Maybe it means handling something for somebody. Maybe that means getting a bug reported and scheduled or referring the requester to the appropriate party who can help them if we cannot. We want to make it as easy as possible for the agent to successfully use our system to sell more homes.”
I am sure you have heard the quote by Maya Angelou “at the end of the day people won’t remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel.” We believe that to be true, especially in customer service. We want to make sure that MoxiWorks users always feel supported and never feel overwhelmed or frustrated.
The Proof is in the Data
Our Customer Success team has worked hard to maintain an astounding customer support satisfaction rating of 90% or higher over the last year and continue to do so as reported in a satisfaction poll sent to every single agent that uses our support. This means that at least 9 times out of 10, agents are leaving their experience with Customer Success feeling great about what they learned and accomplished. As a brokerage, that means your agents are continually seeing the value of your technology investment, and in turn, your investment in their success. When you compare this to the industry average customer support satisfaction rating of 78%, it is clear that with MoxiWorks, your agents won’t ever want to try to go elsewhere.
And it’s not just agents. Brokerages who choose MoxiWorks stay with MoxiWorks. Our customer retention rate stands proudly at 97%. Yes, 97% of our customers who have joined forces with MoxiWorks have stayed with us. Our clients see us as a true partner and we see our clients as customers for life, evolving with them and addressing the ever-changing needs of the industry. Rolling out new technology is never a desirable task for a brokerage or any business for that matter. With MoxiWorks, you can find ease knowing that you have found a technology partner for life.
On top of all of this, MoxiWorks is really proud of our Net Promoter Score (NPS). NPS is the world’s leading metric for measuring customer satisfaction and loyalty. It is designed to gauge how willing a customer is to recommend a product or service to others. We actively measure our NPS of key stakeholders and have an NPS of 54, significantly higher than the industry average of 26. This is measured by asking customers the question “on a sale of 0 to 10, how likely is it that you would recommend our organization to a friend or colleague?” If they answer 0-6, they are detractors, if they answer 7-8, they are passives, and if they answer 9-10, they are promoters. Then, take the percentage of responders that were detractors and subtract it from the percentage of responders that were promoters, and you will have you NPS score. MoxiWorks customers are not just satisfied with their service, but the vast majority of them would recommend MoxiWorks to a friend or colleague as well.
The Process
So how does it all come together for our clients? First comes our ‘Engagement Cookbook’ and onboarding. According to Bill Yaman, our VP of Customer Engagement, this process “has been refined over the years as a result of hundreds of onboarding engagements. It is a multi-phase process with one overriding principle– we are successful together only if the Moxi team really understands your business requirements and becomes an extension of your brand, training methodology, and marketing team. Moxi onboarding is not a ‘one size fits all’ model. Rather, it will vary based on business need, product requirements, geography, etc.”
Also, during this time, our Training and Creative Services teams are working alongside Account Management to ensure all-around success with onboarding, launch, and ongoing adoption. Training will develop curriculums based on a client’s needs and market while Creative Services will work as an extension of our clients’ marketing teams ensuring their content is beautiful and impactful.
Next, once MoxiWorks services are launched, the Account Management team will continue their involvement to ensure that agent adoption and success continues. Shared by Bill Yaman, “we have brokerages that have been clients for five years and we are still holding weekly or bi-weekly meetings with them. That is fundamentally how we achieve 97% customer retention – which is unrivaled in the industry. If you exclude customers that signed on with us in the past year, our average customer has been with us between four and five years.”
Once clients are onboarded, they are also able to utilize our Customer Success team. As mentioned before, assistance can be found via chat, scheduled call, email or help center. Nathan added, “our representatives do not have a numerical or time-based quota; they will help you for as long as it takes.”
At MoxiWorks, customer is key. If our customers are successful, we are successful. When a brokerage chooses us, they aren’t just getting a robust platform of tools to level up their real estate business, they are also getting a team of rock stars to assist and guide them along the way.
The cure for the inventory shortage is sitting right in front of us
The Home Sales Predictor shows a continued increase in home sales as we move into 2021
We learned a lot in 2020.
We learned how to innovate in all new ways. We learned how to pivot at a moment’s notice as shutdowns spread. We learned new ways to use our technology. And, as Helen Hanna Casey put it during last week’s RISMedia’s Rocking in the New Year event, “we are better prepared than any year beforehand.”
While there was a lot we’d like to leave behind in 2020, these lessons learned, and skills gained are something to be grateful for.
One of the things that came out of 2020 for us at MoxiWorks was our Home Sales Predictor. The Home Sales Predictor predicts the trends of real estate agent activity within our products and the correlation to closed residential real estate transactions. And our predictions have been within 2% of the actual number of home sales each month.
It’s been so encouraging to see the way our industry bounced back this year and it seems that trend is bound to continue. Let’s take a deeper look.
2021 Homes Sales Predictor – January & February
Based on activity inside our products during November and December of 2020, we predict there will 422K and 447K home sales in January and February respectively. Take a look at the graph below to see the continued trend of this correlation.
Source: The MoxiWorks Home Sales Predictor – January 2021
The graph above shows there was the usual dip we would expect to see around the holidays (everyone needs to take some time to rest and recharge, especially this year). But, we are confident we will see the trend of home sales continue to pick back up as we are already expecting to see a 30% increase YOY from Jan 2020 and a 33% increase YOY from Feb 2020.
Curing the inventory shortage
“For years we’ve discussed that there is no need to limit ourselves to an average of only 5 million home sales each year,” said MoxiWorks CEO, York Baur.“So why has the industry continued to settle at this milestone?”
In 2020, there were 5.65 million home sales AND that is with a pandemic vs. the 5.25 million in 2019.
“For better or worse, this pandemic forced many agents to do what they hadn’t always done before and that’s make the market,” said Baur.
The inventory is there, it just has to be uncovered.
Let’s make the market
This is our battle cry for you and your agents for 2021. Don’t be a victim to the market, make the market.
Be proactive and give your clients the knowledge they need to make the decision to sell their home. The more knowledge you can disseminate to your clients, the more likely their confidence grows to transact. Agents should be a trusted resource who gives their clients annual, or even quarterly, property reviews keeping them abreast of their homes worth, but also the worth of homes in their area.
“2021 is going to be the year where the agent and brokerage that knows how to get listings is going to drive by the brokerage that is too focused on buyers,” says Baur. “If you can be better at finding and winning listings than your competitor, you are going to win.”
2020 proved that we can make the market. So let’s get out there and sell more homes together.
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.
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Why You Should Be Concerned About the Redfin IPO
York Baur – CEO, Moxi Works
Redfin went public last week, raising well over $100M at a valuation of $1.5B. That’s what all the media is focused on, but what does it mean to you the brokerage owner?
The bad news is that you should be concerned. Redfin has deep pockets, deep technology, and now has access to the public markets to raise more capital as needed to grow further. They invest tens of millions of dollars in their technology annually, have a great website, and spend lots of time and money driving traffic to it. Like it or not, they’ll be a factor, and they’re going to put pressure on you to deliver better technology and a slicker experience for both your agents and their consumers.
The good news is that you have everything you need available to you to compete successfully. How can I be so sure? Because Seattle-based Windermere Real Estate has had Redfin operating in its home market of Seattle for 12 years with $200M of capital, and despite all the hype, tech and money, Redfin still has only 2.6% market share compared to Windermere’s 21%. Even more important, Windermere did 38% more transactions last year than 5 years ago in the tightest inventory market we’ve seen in a long time.
How can Windermere continue to dominate in the face of Redfin? And Zillow for that matter (also based in Seattle’s tech-centric market), supposedly siphoning away business by selling leads to the highest bidder? And how can you do what they’re doing? The answer is:
- Continue to focus on agent’s sphere of influence – the people that already know, like, and trust their agents. Sound obvious? It is, but I’ll bet you’re not doing it enough. We talk to brokerages across the country every day who are distracted by chasing a lead generation battle that they can’t win. How are you seriously going to compete with the billions of dollars of capital that Redfin, Zillow, and Realtor.com spend every year driving consumers to their sites? You can’t. Period. Lead gen will continue to be a small piece of your business, but that’s it – a small piece. The biggest piece of your business is the core business, which is transactions coming from consumers an agent already has a trust relationship with.
- Quit focusing on buyer leads. Every realtor and broker wants a seller, not a buyer if they have the choice. Redfin generates buyer leads. Zillow generates buyer leads. What’s the overwhelming source of seller leads? It’s an agent’s sphere. Control the inventory in your market by concentrating agents on their sphere, and you make money. There are only around five million homes transacted every year no matter how many buyer leads are generated – don’t you want to control the seller side of that equation?
- Control and centralize your data. Windermere decided years ago to put an open platform in place. It’s like a power strip where they can plug in all their agent tools and have them work together. How? By putting all their property data, agent and brokerage data, and consumer data in one place. Windermere currently has over 2.6M consumer names in that platform, allowing agents and the brokerage to market to those consumers to generate listings, using dozens of tools in various markets to do so. Do you have a centralized database of your agent’s contacts? What are you doing to help them stay in front of their sphere of influence?
- Quit creating islands of data and technology. Windermere has taken the platform concept to heart, and has solved the problems of tools that don’t work together, redundant data entry, and not being able to get a comprehensive view of their business. A technology platform allows them to save millions of dollars annually in office staff time, custom software development, and management overhead. This is in sharp contrast to most brokers, who don’t have a technology strategy. They buy the latest shiny technology object, and don’t even ask the question of how it works with the other technology they have now or might use in the future. Agents are demanding a better experience, and that means not having to start over from scratch with every new tool you provide them, upload their database for the 17th time, or having to rekey data.
- Training, coaching and sales discipline. Redfin has made much out of the fact that they hire agents and support staff as full-time employees, not contractors. But that’s not the big difference – we hire contractors in the tech world all the time, and they contribute just as much as our employees do. So what’s the difference? It’s not the person, it’s how they’re trained, coached, and held to a standard of how to do business. That means having a training program, providing good coaching (which means training your coaches), and having a technology (specifically a CRM system) that reinforces the sales discipline every day as agents do business. Windermere has trained over two-thirds of their agents in the Windermere sales discipline (heavily influenced by Larry Kendall’s Ninja Selling), puts an emphasis on managers doing agent coaching, and has built their discipline into their CRM to provide ongoing reinforcement.
With Redfin beating its chest on Wall Street, you need a response for your agents and your consumers – now. Do nothing and you’ll lose agents, because they won’t tolerate inaction. And don’t forget the Millennial agent who isn’t just comfortable with tech, they demand it as a necessary tool for doing business. But despite all the hype and money spent, Windermere did eight times as many transactions in the greater Seattle market last year than Redfin did. With performance like that, we’d all be well served to look at what they’re doing right.
Find out more about brokerage open platforms and how they work by clicking here.
