Realogy, the owner of several of the largest real estate brands and the largest brokerage, has baked an online store into its fast-evolving technology platform, “Zap.” It will offer brokers and agents the ability to purchase and access third-party products and services alongside Realogy’s proprietary tools.
Lanny Baker
“ZapStore” is a “doorway from Zap out to all kinds of third party applications products, services and the like,” said Lanny Baker, CEO of ZipRealty, a high-tech brokerage owned by Realogy.
ZapStore marks the latest step in Realogy’s effort to beef up a technology platform it acquired by purchasing ZipRealty in 2014. Realogy is in the process of deploying the platform to the hundreds of thousands of agents who work at its company-owned brokerage, NRT, and all the offices part of its franchise system, which operate under brands including Century 21, Coldwell Banker and Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate.
Realogy has made Zap available to about 15,000 agents that full under its franchise network and 2,000 NRT agents so far, Baker said.
The goal of Zap is to “support brokerages and agents in every aspect of their daily business,” including lead generation, branded marketing, customer relationship management and transaction management, according to ZipRealty.
At launch, the ZapStore is only available to brokers. Products and services available for purchase include those provided by: AccountTECH, Alignmark, American Home Shield, Cloud CMA, DocuSign, dotloop, Imprev, Lone Wolf Real Estate Technologies, Loop & Tie, Xpressdocs and Zillow Group.
The ZapStore will also offer a proprietary search engine marketing service to brokers. The store’s partners and features will continue to expand throughout 2016 and beyond.
In addition, ZapStore makes it possible for brokers to access every service or product they purchase in the store from within Zap, rather than having to open up products or services separately. In the future, ZapStore will offer a similar experience to agents and deeper integrations with products and services.
For example, an agent using a proprietary Zap tool to compose a marketing email might eventually see the option to use a third-party service, like Imprev, to convert the marketing email into a postcard and mail it to all those clients.
“All of those surrounding services will be brought to bear and projected into the Zap experience to really create some strong integration,” Baker said.
Alex Perriello, president and chief executive officer of the Realogy Franchise Group, said in a statement that ZapStore offers a way for tech providers to “begin building products that work seamlessly on one platform, while gaining access to the world’s largest network of agents and brokers.”
Realogy sees Zap as a core part of its value proposition to agents and brokerages across the country.
“When you affiliate with a [Realogy] real estate franchise brand, you’re getting not only the name and the marketing clout … and all the other benefits .. but you’re also receiving a major solve to your technology deficits or headaches, and better than that, you’re getting a technological asset that’s going to help you compete in the marketplace,” Baker said.