Keller William’s New Consumer Real Estate App: Changing the Way People Search For Real Estate
See How the new KW Consumer App helps this couple collaborate with their Realtor to find their dream home!
KW will roll out its next-generation consumer app this fall. The app revolutionizes the consumer experience at a time when more and more prospective buyers and sellers are looking for holistic, tech-savvy ways to help them navigate and streamline the buying and selling process. Currently, tools and guides in the real estate world come piecemeal and can be confusing and frustrating.
Gary Keller, CEO of Keller Williams Realty says “in two years, you won’t recognize the industry”. Technology companies are pouring billions of dollars into artificial intelligence that is designed to add value to the consumer experience and, in many cases, to disrupt the industry. Keller Williams (KW) is responding by making sure its consumers and agents have the very best end-to-end platform available to transition into a new technological era of real estate.
Eighty-seven percent of all buyers bought their home through an agent in 2018, according to a survey by the National Association of REALTORS®. KW’s consumer app empowers agents and consumers, uniting them to create one central point for communication and collaboration. Consumers start by downloading an agent’s branded app. Then, the choices consumers make on the app – the types of properties they click on, the neighborhoods they look at, etc… – are captured, and artificial intelligence mines that data. Agents then know exactly what their clients are looking for, so they can make more informed suggestions and recommendations.
Consumers also get a special insight into their preferences through the app. The reward is twofold: consumers are provided with the transparency and on-demand information they crave, and agents are able to deepen their relationship with consumers while solidifying their stance as hyperlocal, data-driven experts.
Creating A Curated Client Experience
KW is reimagining the consumer real estate experience as we strive to create the most advanced consumer home search application on the market. Utilizing the power of KW’s 160,000 + agent workforce (with development input from tech powerhouses such as Google), our Artificial Intelligence (AI) is able to learn from our data in order to power the new KW platform.
According to Honlia Hao, senior product manager for KW’s consumer initiative, “Customers currently find the [buy/sell] process very frustrating, and the [online] tools are all over the place. There’s really no one providing a holistic end-to-end experience that solves a lot of consumers’ pain points.”
As KW’s artificial intelligence learns more, it enables our technology team to put together the type of end-to-end experience Hao is talking about. You will soon be able to expect the level of personalization from your real estate app that you have in the other digital spaces you frequent every day (think Amazon or Netflix).
You will also be able to communicate with us directly through the app to ask questions and schedule showings. Similarly, we can reach out to you with listing recommendations, documents, and follow-up information to help you navigate the buy/sell process with ease.
Next Generation Real Estate Search
Consumers can expect the way they search for homes and interact with a real estate search portal to change drastically over the next 2 years.
We are creating a neighborhood-centric search where you can find homes based on your unique preferences, such as lifestyle, preferred school district, and whether you prefer hardwood or tile floors. Our app will then give you the option to look at commute times from each listing you like to your kid’s school, your work, the grocery store or anywhere else. School ratings and teacher to student ratios for each school district in your search area will also be right at your fingertips.
“Buyers want help finding the right neighborhood for them and want to understand what it’s like to live in a certain neighborhood”, Hao says. Buyers, especially first-time buyers, often start the process not fully understanding what it entails and how long it takes to find the right home. That’s another way KW’s consumer app will help.
“We’ve created interactive ways that take and guide users through that process,” Hao says. “They know expectations, how long it takes, what the steps are. And, hopefully, that removes frustration for them.”
For example, ‘Guide’ – one of the app’s star features – allows agents to customize each consumer’s experience. At any moment, consumers can log in and view where their transaction is at in addition to the next steps. They can also message their agent with inquiries, questions, and concerns within the app. Similarly, agents can reach out to their clients with recommendations, documents and follow-up information to help them navigate the buy/sell process with ease.
A Revolution In Real Estate
Big technology companies have poured nearly $16 billion dollars into real estate to try and disrupt the industry in the last two years. This figure is nearly double what they spent in our industry in the five years prior to that. Many want to create a world where homes are bought and sold online, and many cases without an agent.
What incentivized them to invest so much money so quickly?… The answer is Artificial Intelligence. Big tech corporations believe they can do the real estate agent’s job through AI powering sites like Zillow, Trulia, and Redfin and others that are on the horizon. They believe that they can scoop up commission dollars associated with a real estate transaction. They want to create an industry of ‘agent-enabled technology’. Under this model, local agents merely do the groundwork necessary to make big corporations money.
‘Agent-Enabled Tech’ Versus The ‘Tech-Enabled Agent’
We believe that, in general, big tech does not care about you. A Technology company and its shareholders don’t care if you get the best home for the best price as long as they make a profit. To them, you are not an individual that they care about. You are a dollar sign they wish to cash in on to “maximize shareholder profits”.
On the other hand, Keller Williams Realty is creating the ‘technology-enabled agent’, keeping the agent front and center in the process with technology and systems, powering a personal relationship between a consumer and the agent. We plan to utilize the power of Keller Williams systems and AI technology to make the buy/sell process less intimidating, more efficient, and highly personalized without sacrificing the value of human connection.
We are grateful that Keller Williams is pioneering a way for us to be the ‘tech-enabled agents’ of the future. But we also know, through our 18-years of experience in the real estate industry, that technology can never replace the value of a local, proven, and connected real estate agent. We believe that consumers continue to value someone with proven, local experience and a vested interest in their well being and that of the community they live and work in.
Piper Partners fosters connections with clients that last many years. We are committed to our relationship with you beyond the profit from one sale. We will come alongside you early on in your buy/sell process to advise you even years before you plan to buy or sell. Then we will stick with you until your next sale and purchase comes around.
Even though how we do business changes with technological innovation, our mission as a local small business remains the same. We believe that goodwill is contagious and being a positive force in our communities is the goal of our business!
We hope to use our new technology to better serve you, our clients, with all of your real estate needs.
If you want to learn more about Keller Williams technology and how we can utilize it to help you buy or sell a home, Contact us!
