UrbanDigs wants to be like “eharmony for real estate” with new lead-gen play

Analytics firm will connect sellers with 3 agent leads

Real estate data firm UrbanDigs is getting into the lead-generation game.

A new service, dubbed “Sell My Apartment,” connects sellers with three potential sales agents within a matter of hours, said founder Noah Rosenblatt. “Kind of like eharmony for real estate is where we’re heading.”

He said the service is a way to help sellers connect with a qualified agent, and for agents it’s a way to get a foot in the door. Each agent is vetted based on their recent sales, including marketing time and listing discount.

“Ultimately, we’re going to be launching tools so sellers can find agents and see production stats,” Rosenblatt said. “Like, these 10 agents have done business in my area. These took 50 days to sell and these took 80. This one sold at 94 percent of the ask and this one at 80 percent of the ask.”

Rosenblatt, a former Halstead agent, launched UrbanDigs in 2010 as a real-time residential market analytics platform. Last year, UrbanDigs introduced a listings portal with listings from the Real Estate Board of New York’s syndicated feed known as the RLS, or Residential Listing Service. It launched a portal for rental listings earlier this month.

The move comes at a time when a variety of players — from brokerages to aggregators — are looking for a piece of the real estate business. Rosenblatt said UrbanDigs is piloting the service with 30 agents across several firms. For now, agents using the service will pay UrbanDigs a referral fee of 15 percent on their closed commissions.

Some of the biggest players in lead-generation game are Realogy’s Cartus (a relocation service), San Francisco-based Home Light and City Realty in New York City. In recent years, a handful of lead-gen brokerages, including Elegran, Triplemint and LG Fairmont, have also gained a foothold in the city. And StreetEasy’s Premier Agent — the controversial agent advertising program — delivers buyer leads to agents who pay. It benefits from being the most popular listings portal in the five boroughs.

“I can’t compete with StreetEasy. Very few can so I’m not going to try,” Rosenblatt said. “But there are opportunities and pathways to get buyers to find the right agent.” He added: “We think there’s a science behind finding a couple of agents who may be great to work with you.”

Read more here.

Join us November 13-15 for the Property Portal Watch Conference Madrid 2019.