Our goal is to help real estate agents communicate better, help them find qualified buyers faster and to provide a place where they can quickly and efficiently kick start their marketing efforts.
Dallas, TX (PRWEB) July 17, 2015
Dallas, Texas startup HipPocket, The Private Real Estate Agent Network™, founded by entrepreneur James Bohan-Pitt and boutique real estate broker Clay Stapp of CLAY STAPP+CO has been announced as a finalist in the Most Innovative Technology Award category at the upcoming Inman Connect conference August 4th-7th in San Francisco.
HipPocket is a mobile-first, private real estate agent network. It enables agents to work smarter as a community by providing a single, national platform, delivered locally to real estate agent communities so they can market and discover the now 30%-40% of properties being transacted outside of the Multiple Listing Service (MLS).
“HipPocket solves a problem that most real estate agents don’t even realize exists,” said Bohan-Pitt. “Our goal is to help real estate agents communicate better, help them find qualified buyers faster and to provide a place where they can quickly and efficiently kick start their marketing efforts. To do this, there has to be one place that only real estate agents can go to have one conversation with their entire real estate agent community, in real time.”
Stapp added, “Many, including me, advocate that Realtors® should quickly enter properties into the MLS to give their listings the most exposure, but this does not solve the communication problem. The MLS is not a place to build a conversation with the real estate agent community. It is a database, an all important data source for Realtors®, but in today’s world it simply has not caught up with how the world communicates. And it may never.”
Bohan-Pitt explained that Realtors® are not just sharing multi-million dollar homes to a select few of their Realtors® friends. They are sharing everything, right from the moment they have the listing in their hands. Whether it is a $250,000 apartment or a $5M mansion, Realtors® are using every method at their disposal to get the message out before they use their MLS.
Bohan-Pitt continued, “88% of buyers and sellers use a Realtor® to complete the transaction process. Surely, if we can get the Realtors® talking to each other more effectively and efficiently as a community, we can speed up the matching of buyers and sellers significantly; attract more qualified buyers to make an offer; and in turn help Realtors® focus on clients and prospects rather than the drudge of endless emailing, texting, calling and posting to social media and multiple private groups, and the ensuing repetitive conversations.”
“This was the reason I chose to co-found HipPocket with James,” said Stapp. “When we get a new listing, we spend hours and hours promoting it by phoning other agents, individually texting top producers, sending e-Blasts and hand delivering marketing flyers to other brokers. When we have a specific 'Buyer Need,' we ring up top listing agents in certain neighborhoods praying they have a “Coming Soon” that has yet to hit the MLS or the ever elusive “Pocket Listing“. In both cases, we continue to have the same conversation over and over, spending hours inefficiently trying to get the word out.”
Stapp added, “To try to solve the communication problem, Realtors® have resorted to hijacking Facebook and LinkedIn. Private social groups created by title companies, lenders and agents have sprung up overnight. Private groups are a place where we can share information and talk privately with some in the community, but we all know that only a fraction of the community are active inside these groups. Not only does this put us at a disadvantage, is it fair to exclude people? Are these hacked social networks really the right answer to our problem?”
Stapp explained that in the social media groups there is no search feature, no instant matching between listings and needs and no way to choose to see only listing and needs from areas and people he’s most interested in. “Are Realtors® equipping themselves with the most powerful tools and technology to best help our clients with one of the most important transactions of their life?” said Stapp. “Then there is the Broker in-house problem. We all promote our clients’ up-and-coming needs in our weekly office meetings. We go around the room talking about new “Coming Soon” listings and “Buyer Needs” in the hope that we find the right match. Doesn’t this feel a little bit 20th Century?”.
HipPocket says they are not here to compete with the MLS; in fact, they encourage all real estate agents to continue using the MLS as they always have. However, HipPocket is here to help solve the communication problem that all 800+ MLS’s are struggling to solve. HipPocket complements the MLS by being the single social and mobile layer essential in today’s market.
“As Realtors®, we have to figure out how we can stay relevant in the eyes of today’s consumers.” said Stapp. “HipPocket arms us with a peer-to-peer communication tool to share ad hoc information, Realtor®-to-Realtor®. Unlike the likes of ‘Zulia’, HipPocket is here to help Realtors®, not destroy our profession by selling our own data back to us. And if that isn’t reason enough to try HipPocket, then I don’t know what is.”.
“We are honored to have been selected by Inman as a finalist for the 'Most Innovative Technology' Award at the upcoming Inman Connect 2015 Conference alongside such a selection of phenomenal companies in the real estate technology space,” said Bohan-Pitt. “We are more excited than ever now to be attending Connect and look forward to showcasing HipPocket to thousands of Realtors® and Brokers in the Startup Alley. If you’re a Realtor®, and want to start working smarter, drop in and see us. We’d love to show you the future of Realtor®-to-Realtor® marketing.”.
HipPocket launched in the Apple App Store in May 2015 and is available to all real estate MLS communities around the United States. As of today, real estate agents can post any pre-MLS or pocket listing into their local HipPocket community. HipPocket have a lot in the pipeline from the addition of “Buyer Need” posts later this month, to deep search, sorting and filtering, and customized listing feeds showing only the most relevant postings to the agent.
