Developed by an NYC top producer, Stacks is designed to help high-performing agents manage only the most important data required to get deals done.
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Stacks is an app for agents to measure and manage business growth.
Platforms: iOS app
Ideal for: Goal-driven, motivated agents; mid- to top-level referral-based agents
Top selling points
- Multi-faceted revenue goal tracking
- Lack of excess marketing or lead gen features
- Business-first user experience
- Intuitive, native iPhone UI
Top concerns
Agents might eschew a business tracking app that avoids lead generation or IDX integration; no Android version
What you should know
New York City broker and Stacks developer, Nicholas Palance, told Inman in a demonstration of his just-launched app, “Most agents don’t really need to know the last time they texted a lead.”
Because that information is already on your phone’s text display.
Palance was riffing on the drawbacks of many large, enterprise-type hybrid marketing and CRM platforms that are often swollen with features agents never end up using.
He describes his app as a FitBit for real estate performance: know how you’re performing at any time, and get data on how to perform better.
Whereas a lot of today’s proptech can be compared to some trendy diet that requires specialized menus and a biology degree to maintain, Stacks’s mantra is merely, “Eat less, exercise more.” His approach to business is the same.
The app’s spartan user interface starts with the input of personal financial goals. What did you make last year?
How many deals do you want to close this year? What are your total current sales? What was your record sale?
The goal setting functionality includes input of your split structure, designated in a separate screen with options and simple on/off toggle switches.
From that point the app has pretty much all it needs to help agents run their business.
Each login thereafter presents a couple of annual progress graphs and employs a slick tap command to jump between different income looks and chart variations.
Below that, users swipe through charts that benchmark income against lead sources, deal types, most active market, etc.
There’s a collection of basic calculators to use when chatting with clients or selling to a new one.
The closing cost calculator is a fast, impressive way to get a seller to the realize the bottom line. It can be customized to get really detailed, but that would be overkill. Sellers just want to know how much they’ll make, and it’s not an official document.
Stacks isn’t trying to be a CRM, but it does offer a rundown of important contacts, how much their sale is worth and the resulting commission amount.
The list can be sorted by buyers, sellers, past status, active deals and other common categories; and, clicking on someone brings up how that commission will contribute to your annual goal.
Users can dive deeper into each individual for the specifics on properties, contract dates, closing dates and various other commonalities.
Stacks’ “traffic” feature is a nice way to demonstrate that real estate really is a numbers game.
It simply lists the number of showings, offers, visitors, open houses and general business activities. Each time you show a home, tapping the “plus” icon records it.
The intent of this feature is to show users how the volume of activity correlates with income — show more, call more, do more and you’ll close more.
The “activity” report can be shared directly with listing clients from the app using the iPhone’s native apps for a fast way to show sellers that a price fix might be in order.
Stacks comes with a surprising little “open house” feature designed to capture visitor data using the agent’s phone.
(In open house mode, phones lock on the app to prevent visitors from accessing other features.)
The app uses that data to start a client profile, and should a lead be worth pursuing, one tap makes them a client. If not, they can be deleted.
Again, whereas CRMs or similar real estate business apps seize every opportunity to capture data, Stacks is very much about valuing its users’ time, and thus it hangs on to only the data that is most likely to make money sooner than later.
That underlying UX theme can be found in the “hours spent” field, a recurring data field that asks users to estimate how much time they’ve spent on each client and deal. The best agents know their hourly rate.
There are several other sneaky-cool features in Stacks, including a resources library, a link to popular closing gifts on Amazon and a vendor management module.
The app is designed for fast, one-hand access, and it’s quite crisp considering it’s the first such product led by Palance.
Stacks isn’t trying to too hard to be visually clever or particularly innovative in that respect, which in this early stage is a good thing. After all, functionality wins the day in the app market.
Any full-steam-ahead, relationship-driven real estate pro looking around for a simple, smart tool to support business should give Stacks a trial run — before the competition does.
In its soft launch, the app can be had for $19.99/month, or $199/year.
Have a technology product you would like to discuss? Email Craig Rowe
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