RE/MAX to shutter tech platform booj, lay off workers by end of 2022
“RE/MAX first acquired first acquired booj, then a tech startup, in 2018. About a year and a half later, RE/MAX launched its booj platform, which was meant to be an end-to-end solution that would streamline the experience of its agents. At the time of the launch, then-CEO Adam Contos described it as “a landmark moment in the long history of our company.”
We are now seeing the consequences of the “we’re a technology company” rhetoric in the broker/franchisor space. What many brokers, franchisors, and MLS organizations are beginning to realize, this shit is hard.
Booj is one reason I left RE/MAX. It over promised and under delivered. I don’t know if that tech was meant to be scaled to such a size. Why, at this stage of the game, are the legacy franchises having such a hard time coming up with tech that the owners and agents can use to attract new leads on the internet? I wonder how many turn to a 3rd party solution for that. I know I certainly did.
Yep. You have establishment brokers thinking they can buy tech and just plug it in and walk away.
A friend of mine has been with RE/MAX for a long time. He’s not a techie so I’ve helped with the RE/MAX tech stack over the last ten years. When RE/MAX bought Booj, I thought this is gonna be pretty cool, they are finally modernizing their CRM and marketing platforms. The previous company they contracted with for marketing was long-in-the-tooth and was kind of sucky. So Booj looked promising but then they did nothing with it. I called Remax support on numerous occasions asking if they were at least going to add some various types of marketing that they had from the previous sucky company. They said they were working on it but nothing ever happened.
So now they’re going with kvCore, another tedious long-in-the-tooth company that sits on its hands content to have a shitty UI/UX. My current broker is First Team and I have access to kvCore. I will never use it. When I first saw kvCore in 2019, I thought, hmm, Mircosoft from the year 2000.
It’s unfortunate the way some of these establishment brokers go with their tech stack, because I know there’s a lot of smart people at these brokerages. Too many cooks in the kitchen, who knows…
I have been building software for real estate for over 25 years now and i fully concur with “ this shit is hard”. I have seen this story many times. First: companies always underestimate preparing a platform for a large new user base. And maintenance is a bigger proposition than expected, just operations is a major effort.
Good for some laughs.
https://news.remax.com/re-max-tech-booj-platform/