BHGRE Metro Brokers Integrates Buyside into Realogy's Zap Platform

Since Realogy purchased ZipRealty and launched ZapLabs, they have been focused on the deployment of agent websites and CRM. Now that the application is fully deployed to the Realogy brands, Realogy has focused on following the leadership direction of Ryan Gorman to launch an open architecture technology strategy.

Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Metro Brokers and their technology partner Buyside are the first to integrate a key product to Zap, representing an important milestone for Zap. This is the first time that the open architecture has been leveraged to let brokers select products that they want to use and work within the Zap ecosystem.

In this deployment of Buyside, customer records in Zap—along with saved searches and listing favorites—are transferred through an application programming interface to Buyside. This powers a key feature of Buyside that enables agents to share buyer demand for properties based upon the number of buyers that match to a property.

In listing presentations, this has become a profoundly powerful source of information that is not available in any other place. With Buyside connected to Zap, an agent can now share the number of buyers across Metro Brokers who are interested in a seller's property. Many agents talk about how they are going to market and advertise a property for sale in a listing presentation. Now, Metro Broker agents can tell the seller how many buyers they already have for a home.

Buyside will be making this integration available to other Realogy brokers immediately.

Press release below:

BHGRE Metro Brokers Integrates Buyside™ Into Realogy's® Zap Platform

Wayne, PA, July 2, 2019 – Buyside™ announced that Atlanta, GA based BHGRE Metro Brokers will be the first firm in the Realogy Franchise Group to integrate data from Zap into Buyside. Metro Brokers is among the largest Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate franchises in the world with over 2,400 agents and 27 offices. Using Buyside's proprietary algorithms, buyer data from all Metro Brokers' Zap websites will be combined with search activity from the major search portals to form a more complete picture of the demand for any property. With Buyside, Metro Brokers agents will be able to forecast the number of buyers in the market for their home during listing presentations. Buyside is the company's lynchpin to their online seller lead generation tools.

Dan McKeenan, Vice President of Operations for Buyside worked with the Zap team on behalf of BHGRE Metro Brokers to integrate three key end points using a custom application programming interface (API) that links Metro Brokers' data, registered consumers, saved searches, and saved properties from the Zap platform into Buyside. "The buyer data is processed at real time speeds and synchronized with the Metro Brokers agent roster and LeadRouter™ identification number," says McKeenan. The Zap sync went live in beta mode at the beginning of June and is in full production now. "We are synchronizing buyer activity on over 2,000 Metro Broker customers and enabling agents to share real time insights about the demand side of the real estate market with their clients."

BHGRE Metro Brokers was among the largest firms in the Realogy Franchise Network to launch the Zap platform in 2016. Since that time, the firm has been aggressive at driving adoption companywide and operates one of the strongest regional marketing programs to connect agents with consumers. BHGRE Metro Brokers is also a Platinum Principle broker in the Cartus Network, Realogy's international relocation services company.

"We are a company driven by people passion," says Craig McClelland, Chief Operating Officer for BHGRE Metro Brokers. "There is nothing more important in our business than providing the very best technology. The business tools we deploy are geared to support the world class delivery of real estate services that our agents provide to the home buying and selling people of our great state." Metro Brokers provides real estate services spanning 8,300 square miles across Georgia.

According to Charles Williams, IV, CEO of Buyside, "The software we supply to Metro Brokers unlocks the power of their buyer data for agents so they can win more listings, become more profitable and command greater control over their inventory." Buyside's core products include Home Valuation landing pages, which combines multiple automated home valuations with visualizations of real-time buyer intent; Buyer Match™ dashboard, which intelligently pairs home buyers and sellers within a brokerage; and Real-time Buyside Market Analysis (BMA), which arms a brokerage's agents with insights on buyer demand to help them close more listing presentations.

"Our affiliation with Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate provides our firm with outstanding analytics and business intelligence tools that are the cornerstone of excellence in any leading real estate firm today," says McClelland. "We have tremendous success marketing properties for sale and leveraging the Zap platform for maturing home buyers. Today's home buyers are shopping for about 240 days before closing. When securing a new listing, our agents use Buyside to explain that the likely buyer for that property has already been working with a Metro Brokers agent for months. The value proposition of our firm's listing presentation is not how we will find buyers, but the number of home buyers that we have looking for their home today. We don't believe that any other brokerage in Georgia has more home buyers than Metro Brokers."

"I am always thrilled to support the remarkable innovation that comes from our brokerage network," says Sherry Chris, CEO of Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate. "BHGRE Metro Brokers continues to develop new landscapes that enrich the experience for people who enjoy our services. This is a fine expression of using innovative technology and sophisticated business systems to support our lifestyle brand."

About Buyside

Buyside uses design and data science to create powerful insights about home buyers so real estate brokerages can empower agents and win more listings. With offices in Philadelphia, New York City, and San Francisco, Buyside works networks together some of the nation's largest brokerages. Learn more at www.GetBuyside.com.

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