The real estate industry generates $70 billion a year, just on commissions earned on transactions. It is a mammoth market, and yet it remains stuck in the past.
I first realized this while working with startups in the mortgage space, where I saw how real estate agents sometimes juggle 10–15 different systems that were not interconnected to do things like run their website, power their CRM, and manage their teams. I was also shocked by how manual basic processes, like document signatures remained.
As a consumer, we have access to an abundance of powerful tools to manage social relationships. Even consumers who are buying houses have a wealth of sophisticated, tech-enabled resources at their disposal. Meanwhile, real estate professionals had nothing comparable. All the tasks that agents had to complete — from finding leads to nurturing to relationship-building to actually helping people buy and sell houses — were disjointed and inefficient, which curbed their ability to sell.
In addition, most had no streamlined way to engage customers or track their team’s progress. For example, it wasn’t easy to do something as simple as organize leads and guide them to the right agent, enable clients to search for properties on an agent’s own site, or deploy personalized drip campaigns. And by using multiple systems that couldn’t talk to each other, agents struggled to have a comprehensive picture of what was going on. A lot of valuable insight got lost along the way.
I began digging deeper, and saw that there were a few companies innovating in the space, but their offerings were too expensive for early stage or small teams. The opportunity to transform this sector with better, more affordable tools sounded like a no-brainer to me, and so the team at Appsurdity set out to build Chime.
We interviewed countless real estate professionals to learn about their days, their frustrations and their needs. We saw that an all-in-one platform that brought everything together in one place, automated certain aspects of their work , and integrated data into the process would be a real game-changer. Through years of experience building apps at Appsurdity, we had the team and expertise in place to build something that real estate professionals would love.
Now we are finally ready to launch Chime to the public.
Chime is a powerful lead generation and CRM solution for real estate professionals. It solves all of the pain points most agents struggle with on a daily basis. The suite of tools enables you to launch marketing campaigns, track leads’ activities, build customer relationships, and seamlessly manage teams. Chime is mobile-friendly and works across multiple devices, so agents can stay on top of their sales anytime, anywhere. Nothing falls through the cracks.
In addition, Chime’s lead generation capabilities make it easy, accessible and affordable to deploy highly-targeted, optimized marketing campaigns. Chime is the only platform in the market that integrates social data into its lead generation system, which seems like a no-brainer given that social media is where customers spend most of their time. This information not only identities prospective leads, but also enables agents to customize campaigns to those leads’ personalities and preferences.
By simplifying precision marketing and streamlining operations from end-to-end, Chime allows you to focus on what really matters — boosting your business.
So far in the private beta, the results have been dramatic. One agent had to hire a team of four because he got so many leads using Chime. Another met her sales volume from last year in just a few months. Chime gives agents all the tools and information they need to ring in the sales. It’s time to bring the business of real estate out of the past.
Chime will be presenting its product for the first time at Inman Connect — the industry’s leading real estate conference, held August 2–5 in San Francisco. If you want to check us out, swing by Booth 2 in the Startup Alley for a demonstration.
The Chime app is available on the Apple Store and Google Play. Try it out today!
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Matthew is the co-founder of Appsurdity, which creates mobile applications that unleash connections, communication and creativity in a way that may seem absurd today, but will become the standard very soon. He brings over 15 years of experience in the startup, mobile and finance space to the Chime team. When he’s not innovating in mobile apps, you can find Matthew chasing around his children or making his own wines.