EXp World Holdings, the parent company of the virtual cloud brokerage eXp Realty is acquiring Showcase IDX, a real estate tech company focused on consumer search, marketing and lead generation. With the acquisition, eXp Realty plans to launch a consumer-facing search portal.
Glenn Sanford | Photo credit: eXp World Holdings
“We’re very impressed by the technology and talent that Showcase IDX has assembled, and we look forward to working together to expand eXp’s reach by creating a consumer portal for home search, market intelligence and agent marketing,” Glenn Sanford, the CEO and founder of eXp World Holdings said, in a statement. “Together, we have big plans to help agents engage with consumers in a more significant way, and ultimately build their business.”
Showcase IDX, which was founded in 2003, provides clients with property search for online and mobile platforms, lead generation, mapping, and customer relationship management (CRM) tools and integrations. It will be wholly owned by eXp World Holdings, but the businesses with remain separate.
EXp will continue to operate the company’s services for its existing customers, which include a number of top brokerages. The company website boasts of thousands of clients from brokerages affiliated with Keller Williams, RE/MAX, Realogy-owned brands and others.
The company’s entire staff — including CEO Scott Lockhart — will remain in place, but the company’s Atlanta-based operations with be moved to the VirBELA virtual cloud platform, which is also owned by eXp World Holdings. EXp Realty operates its brokerage on VirBELA as well, where agents can collaborate, or attend professional development training.
Scott Lockhart | Photo credit: Showcase IDX
“The Showcase team has always had a mission of helping agents meaningfully connect and engage with online consumers, and joining the eXp World Holdings family will allow us to accelerate that,” Lockhart said, in a statement.
“We both are focused on creating new ways to help people find and buy the home of their dreams with the expertise of a professional real estate agent,” Lockhart added. “This approach puts the home buyer and seller at the heart of the process, guided by innovative cloud-based tools for agents and teams that help provide consistently exceptional experiences at scale.”
For eXp Realty, the acquisition gives them a team with a background in building consumer-facing experiences to eventually launch their own. Nearly all major real estate companies and eXp Realty’s top competitors have all launched new consumer-facing experiences in the past year, including Keller Williams, RE/MAX, Compass and Realogy.
EXp Realty is also not the first company to use an acquisition to bolster their own technology team, towards building that consumer-facing experience. Keller Williams acquired Smarter Agent, while RE/MAX acquired booj, to build out their consumer-facing tools.
