New real estate marketing platform
After much anticipation, Homes.com, a division of Dominion Homes Media, has launched their new real estate marketing platform Homes Connect as demonstrated in the video above. Because the company is no longer selling Advanced Access (AA) sites, the company says they have folded AA sales staff into the Homes Connect team.
The goal of the new real estate marketing platform HomesConnect.com is to “log in once [to] access everything” and is powered by Homes.com which claims 6.5 million homebuyers visit their site monthly.
Along with expected features like customizing flyers, syndicating listings, email campaigns and customizable websites, the platform allows users to import their Facebook and LinkedIn contacts into their prospect manager, and users can even view their friends’ connections. Homes Connect says they offer “nationwide IDX coverage” and that over 650 MLS systems load data every 30 minutes in many cases.
As part of the platform, they offer virtual office websites (VOWs) in 50 markets and they claim they will soon cover 150 markets. The VOWs are aimed to serve brokers and agents which is uncommon in real estate marketing platform VOW offerings.
Homes Connect says a major benefit is that MLS reports (like CMAs) can be generated directly from the Lead Manager and sent to clients rather than using separate systems for both. The dashboard has the look and feel of iGoogle with gadgets users can customize so they only see information at a glance that they’ve chosen which is a trend agents will see other companies follow in the next year, as customization is a hot trend in the user experience design world.
So what took so long?
We’ve been hearing rumors about this major rollout for some time now and asked the company what took so long, given that sometimes moves like these happen very quickly in the tech industry.
Dominion Homes Media (Homes.com parent company) Vice President and General Manager, Andy Woolley told AGBeat, “While other companies are quick to consolidate to bolster their bottom line, we chose not to do so immediately to ensure the best outcome for our customers. We have a large customer base relying on us, in fact larger than anyone in the industry, and while consolidating quickly might have saved us money, it would have risked the stability of the products all of our customers rely on. When we finally chose to consolidate, we did so slowly and carefully to benefit our customers. Homes Connect is the end result of this move, and I’m confident our customers will find tremendous value in using it to improve their real estate businesses.”
