Late last year when Dan and I began talking to the people at Lone Wolf we weren’t actively shopping W+R Studios, but their interest in us made us stop and think. We always enjoyed working with many companies and industry players in organized real estate and proptech. We had relationships with different MLS vendors, portals, brokers, agents, and we wanted to keep it that way. Lone Wolf had a similar model. As we have recently seen, warranted or not, perception about what company is buying you can have drastic implications.
We also wanted to leverage what we saw as our unique position in the real estate space. If you think about it, a comparative market analysis report (CMA), is the first digital representation of a property that could potentially become a listing. So adding a CMA to the tech stack, at the beginning, of a forms and transaction management solution made perfect sense. Lone Wolf was the first to really understand this vision, and the fact that our subscribers were doing close to 300,000 Cloud CMA reports a month (and growing) showed we had the ability to drive good adoption.
Another factor is that at W+R, we always struggled to grow our broker channel and Lone Wolf had a very strong broker sales channel. While many brokers choose to purchase a branded Cloud CMA theme to differentiate themselves from other brokers using Cloud CMA, they rarely opted for the full Cloud CMA broker edition. This was the case in markets where Cloud CMA was offered as a member benefit and markets where it was not. Our value proposition wasn’t strong enough.
So today I’m really excited to talk about the new Cloud CMA for Brokers. We have made a few major enhancements and additions and I’m really pleased with the results. First off, the new Cloud CMA for Brokers is now integrated with both Lone Wolf’s Transactions solutions (zipForm and TransactionDesk Edition). Agents can go from the listing presentation to the listing agreement, to inputting the listing into their MLS system, getting all esignatures, to the purchase agreement without rekeying the same fields over, and over, and over again. And if the broker is using Lone Wolf’s Back Office solution they can account for everything and cut a commission check to the agent once the listing is sold. It’s truly amazing end to end solution and I think brokers are going to love this new integration.
The experience is bi-directional too. So if the agent’s workflow begins in Transactions, they can also start a CMA from there. Craig Rowe at Inman News had a good article about all the integration this morning.
Also, everyone understands that listings are gold. This is especially true in this market. So we are also adding Homebeat to Cloud CMA for Brokers. Homebeat is a great way for agents to stay in touch and re-engage clients. Now every agent in the brokerage will get a Homebeat account. Homebeat has proven to be a great way to generate new listings. Here’s a quote from Greg Fox at Better Homes & Gardens,
“I was one of the first company to implement Homebeat..one of my top agents listened to their admin who said, “we should at least try it”. Next day, they had 6 listing leads, and phoned to thank me.” – Greg Fox
Along with these new features the Cloud CMA for Brokers also includes:
– Branded Theme (Both printed and Live) (optional)
– Broker Dashboard
– Roster management
– Broker CMA Preview
– Direct support
– Homebeat -New!
– Transactions integration – New!
A few disclaimers here. In order to take advantage of the listing input feature, MLS providers need to have the MLSConnect turned on as part of their MLS integration. Typically the listing input functionality falls in two camps, zipForms with Paragon MLS and TransactionDesk with Matrix. Just call us if you have any questions.
Just as before, Cloud CMA for Brokers is an additional cost to brokers where Cloud CMA is offered to agents as a member benefit. We have special launch pricing available to these markets too. Just visit us here.
Also, we are adding the Transaction integration to the full Cloud Agent Suite which now includes Cloud CMA + Homebeat, Cloud Streams, Cloud MLX, Cloud Attract and the Transaction integration. That means if an agent wants this integration but their broker has not signed up, they have a path to do so.
Of course, this is just the beginning. We will now get important feedback from our customers to make the integration better.
Lone Wolf is now waaaaaaaay ahead in giving brokers a truly end to end digital transaction experience. By adding Cloud CMA to the beginning of the transaction, along with the whole Cloud CMA Live virtual listing presentation experience, I like to say brokers are giving themselves a head start in the listing race.
Thanks for taking the time for reading this long post. Stay safe, and I hope to see everyone soon.
