Doorsteps opens its doors to consumers
After launching this summer to real estate professionals, New York-based Doorsteps is opening their doors to consumers to meet their mission to “turn every curious buyer into a confident buyer. And when the time is right, every confident buyer into a committed one,” and to make the process of real estate more human.
Doorsteps founder, Michele Serro told AGBeat, “Doorsteps was launched because I tried to buy a home in New York, and it was one of the most confusing, stressful, and opaque processes I could imagine. And yet my agent wasn’t horrible – it was the whole process that was especially broken.”
“It was surprising to think that the single biggest purchase of my life was so badly designed,” Serro added. “As a former leader at a highly regarded innovation and design agency (IDEO), I knew that if I put the buyers’ needs at the center of the experience, I could make something great for all stakeholders – including agents, lenders, and more.”
Serro set her mind to changing the entire experience. “I sketched out everything that was or felt broken about my experience, and started to brainstorm (with a bunch of designers and engineers) a better way,” she said. “And within a few months, we had our first product launched, which was a tool for agents to help them guide their buyers through the home-buying journey step-by-step.”
Originally an agent product
Doorsteps launched as an agent product, but Serro says buyers continued to sign up for the service, wanting to use the tool themselves as a means of being more educated and organized prior to contacting an agent.
In response, the company launched Doorsteps for Buyers today, which Serro refers to a win-win for buyers and agents. “We still have the agent tool, but now we also have a great way to connect Doorsteps-enabled agents with buyers who come into the system, get their finances, timing, wants and needs all in order, and then feel ready to find a great agent ‘match.’ So the process ends up producing some of the most ready, empowered, and qualified buyers out there, which of course agents (and lenders) love – and makes the experience better for ALL parties.”
On the company blog, Serro writes, “Doorsteps Pro, our product for real estate professionals, still keeps all its great features and content (in fact, we’re adding even more and focused on making that better every day). The big difference now is that agents using the system will also get sent fully qualified buyer leads as part of their subscription. In other words, when a buyer starts using the app and completes the first few phases, he/she can request to be “matched” with a Doorsteps-enabled agent based on their unique Buyer Profile. This makes sure the buyer gets an agent who is truly a great fit, and the agent gets an organized, qualified buyer and a great summary of that buyers’ decisions and inputs at their fingertips. So they can hit the ground running.”
Video explanation of the new buyer tools:
[pl_video type=”vimeo” id=”52965910″]
