When we went to the California Association of Realtors’ Expo this year, we talked with all sorts of interesting businesses supporting the real estate industry. We are highlighting some of the most interesting as part of our new Tech Tuesday series here on ReboReports.
As with the other videos in this series and on this site, this is not a paid endorsement.
Networking is an important part of being a real estate agent. Clients can come from your “sphere of influence,” blogging or tweeting about your community can establish your reputation as a neighborhood expert, and so on. But one aspect of social networking which Realtors frequently underestimate is the importance of connecting with other agents, both within and outside your office, and within and outside your neighborhood. REESAS Services, a new social network for real estate professionals, has figured out that this is a need in the system that other, more buyer-centric platforms aren’t filling, and is providing an invaluable service to agents. Besides linking agents with each other, it also provides tools for agents to strengthen their online presence to attract customers, and for making the most of your professional connections. After all, though you may be competing with local agents for listings, if you have a buyer, you want to be the first one to hear about the listings they did land. Who better to recommend a termite inspector than other agents who’ve worked with all of them in your area at various times? And if some agent across the country figures out a good way to land listings, you can learn from them and apply their techniques to your own community.
Hello, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Brian Fox. I’m with Benutech, and we’re here today in Long Beach, California at the Long Beach Convention Center. We’re going to be interviewing different tech companies, real estate companies, service facilities for you that hopefully can, you know, play a part and help enhance your real estate careers.
BRIAN FOX: Hello again, it’s Brian Fox, we’re here at the Long Beach Convention Center, and we’re here with Cory Brandolini, the CEO and Founder of RESAAS Services. Cory, what brings you here to Long Beach today?
CORY BRANDOLINI: Well, RESAAS is a social network for real estate professionals. And one of the things that we’ve set out to do is make sure we have a presence at all the events where our customers are. We’ve been commercially launched since February of 2013, and we’ve been criss-crossing North America to make sure we have a front-and-center presence at all of the major events – as you know, we met you at one as well. Our customers are the real estate professional, and we’re here to help move their social footprint on a broader spectrum, bring it closer to consumers. We’ve been having fantastic response and traction from our customers that are signing up daily, so it’s been great so far.
FOX: Very good. So, for our viewers’ perspective, what is RESAAS, what does it do?
BRANDOLINI: RESAAS is a social network for real estate professionals. It’s a platform that allows them to take their general workflow and turn that into marketable social content, both from a B2B level, but also to a C level as well. We create massive networks between agents that could be within a firm, or they could be within a geographical area, so if you are a real estate agent from Southern California, and you might do your business in Corona del Mar, and there’s 300 agents in Corona del Mar, you can create a network of all the agents that work within that area that you do business. 99% of all of their transactions will come from that marketplace, and so having a connection with all of those guys, sharing information in real time, helps keeps the vibrancy of the network flowing. So, because of these really unique groups that are being created on the platform, it allows us to expose that information and that network to consumers, so they’re getting this real time vibrant information of not only knowledge about the area, knowledge about the industry or financial markets, how it might reflect their time to purchase, but also the content that’s being posted constantly: new photos of properties, new listings… And it’s all in real time so it becomes a much greater experience on the consumer side as well.
FOX: Very good. Do you guys have any competitors right now, and if so, who are they and what makes you different?
BRANDOLINI: That’s a really good question. We like to say “no, we don’t have any competitors.” The one thing we set out to do – and I spent 23+ years as a commissioned salesman myself in the software side – we have a very deep passion for the real estate professional. Our model is really – if you were to look at all the other technology companies that are involved in real estate today, and the big name ones that everybody knows: Zillow and Trulia, they tend to be much more focused on the consumer side of things, and on the content side, the listing side. RESAAS is focused completely on the other side of the spectrum, for the real estate professionals, the broker-owner, the agent, the Realtor. Creating a platform for them, it’s their own sandbox, so to speak, and helping them bring their model further forward to the way that consumers today know, the GenX and the GenYs want to interact with. So we have a bit of fun with the old bus stop that we show, “Don’t be a bus stop, come on to RESAAS and start marketing yourself that way.” Like I said, we’re growing exponentially, and it’s quite nice to see our customers really taking hold of what we’re doing.
FOX: Very, very good. What is the biggest benefit, then, to a Realtor, if you’re going to sum it up, biggest benefit to a Realtor to use RESAAS Services?
BRANDOLINI: Their activity, their daily activity, their hourly activity that they do on the platform becomes a digital biography of themselves. Just adding commentary about a new listing or a house or the market, or just their thoughts on why people should be buying homes in this area. It becomes real-time, live understanding of who that agent is, and so when consumers come across that page of that agent, it becomes a much more knowledgeable understanding of who that person is and why they might want to do business with them. By being in the moment, and posting your thoughts about real estate or your new listings that you’re doing, it feels more… We like to say it’s the Twitter effect. My kids, they don’t necessarily go to Kobe Bryant’s website but they’ll follow Kobe Bryant on Twitter, because it’s in the moment. I don’t want to look at what Kobe Bryant did last night, I want to know how he’s feeling right now. That’s kind of what we’re doing here with the real estate professional. Get them in the moment, and I think the consumers are going to love that, because it’s “oh wow,” instant gratification from that point. That’s kind of, in a nutshell… I know we could do this for an hour, and I’d love to, but that’s kind of where we are in that.
FOX: Very good. Cory, thank you very much for your time, I appreciate all the information and so do all of our viewers.
BRANDOLINI: My pleasure, thank you.
