Making all the right moves since launch, team transactions app Shaker deserves your attention: Tech Review

Shaker is a transaction management solution for real estate teams and brokerages.

Platforms: Browser, mobile responsive
Ideal for: Teams and brokerages

Top selling points:

• Staged deal hierarchy
• Companion mobile app for agents
• Two-way third-party email sync
• Client portal
• Reactive document checklists

Top concern:

Shaker might face some growth challenges not because of its capabilities, but because multiple listing services are becoming solution gatekeepers, forcing small innovators like Shaker to sell its features on a brokerage-by-brokerage, or single-team basis. This has to change.

This article was updated on August 18, 2022.

What you should know

Shaker positions itself as a transaction management solution, primarily targeting teams. Its flexibility and user experience easily allow it to be applied to an array of real estate business structures, and its feature set push above mere deal oversight. I see it evolving into an operational asset, as well. Brokers and team leaders would be wise to schedule a demo with this lightweight, evolving tool for ensuring everyone knows where every deal in the pipeline stands at any point in its respective lifecycle. 

Shaker’s most recent addition includes a dynamic document delivery tool that loads what’s needed for the user upon setting up a new deal. It tells you what forms are required based on the deal type. Sharp. Users need to upload and set their document preferences only once. After that, it’s ready to quickly assemble the digital paperwork, aiding in compliance and efficiency. 

A new mobile app was launched in late 2021, called Shaker Agent, on the heels of $2 million in additional financial backing.

The iOS and Android solution is more precise in terms of its purpose, which is to work alongside individual agents—Shaker users—to keep them attached to the deal when on the move. It empowers communications, sends deal updates, maintain contacts and react quickly when deal points change. The app is two-way, meaning activity conducted within it remains aligned with the broader experience. It’s Shaker’s shuttlecraft, so to speak. 

Shaker also allows users to continue to leverage their relationships with DocuSign and Dotloop through integrations, and its linkages to more than 100 MLS data servers enable forms to populate quickly, reducing risks that arise from redundant manual entry. 

The app’s user interface balances creativity and pragmatism, emulating a number of popular business project management solutions, such as Trello and Asana. 

Thus, Shaker’s dashboard is spartan and card-based, with deal stages categorized horizontally across the screen. You can easily jump between buyer deals and listing deals, and also customize the name of each stage, ideal for those looking to support an existing in-house process for paper-based transaction management.

This is a flexible product that can be molded to fit your team’s structure and existing workflows, especially with its “Quick Look” capability to add reporting “widget cards” to its dashboard view. Users can get quick looks into deal types, different pipeline views, commission reports, and a number of other business checkpoints. Each card has names, dates, prices and even profile pictures. Tap on it, and it opens a fully detailed look into everything related to that deal.

They can be added and removed with a couple of clicks. It’s a nice bit of programming, and helps keep the dashboard organized and informative.

There’s some powerful, easy-to-access reporting tools, too. Team leads can search by agent, filter by month and categorize breakdowns according to buyers and sellers. It can dive into lead source success, too. And when needed, all of Shaker’s reports can be spat out into .CSV files for use in other forms.

While the company used the term, “CRM-light” in our demo, I don’t see it that way at all, and I told them that this is a good thing. It’s actually an ever-evolving contact list for everyone that is part of each deal. Vendors and other agents, for example, can be added easily when new deals enter the system.

Each vertical stack of stage cards is headlined with the total dollar volume outstanding in each. For example, $1.2 million in Pending or $400k in Closed for this month and so on.

Tasks are part of each deal as well, and like most other aspects of Shaker, they can be assembled in lists and renamed or altered as needed. Maybe a deal for an investment property has a different set of tasks than one for a traditional stand-alone property.

Since this is transaction management for teams, admins can assign tasks and appoint members.

There are document uploads, of course, as well as the ability to review them before pushing a deal to its next stage.

Messaging tools can help keep everyone in check, and when sent, they can also be viewed within any Gmail or other third-party email client. This is something I always look for in software that involves multiple people and critical deal data because no matter how hard we all try to work within the confines of our enterprise systems, at some point, we always end up shooting off an email about it when not logged in.

There’s workflow capability, too. As deals move from stage to stage, notifications can be triggered to alert stakeholders to tasks and emails sent off to consumers.

And speaking of your clients, they can peer into the deal with Shaker, too. Using the Client Portal, sellers and buyers can stay abreast of what’s what and who’s who.

Summarizing the highlights, I’m a fan of Shaker’s messaging tools and in-app email, which uses a mail-merge tech to quickly insert deal data. The overall visual experience is very consumer-friendly, creative and clean. It’s not a document-heavy, managerial approach. This is deal oversight for the agent and their staff, not the company accountant. The more informed the agent is, the happier the client.

The document checklist and agent app round out a software solution that should have industry-wide appeal and hopefully, continues to evolve. Shaker could wind up an acquisition target.

Have a technology product you would like to discuss? Email Craig Rowe

Craig C. Rowe started in commercial real estate at the dawn of the dot-com boom, helping an array of commercial real estate companies fortify their online presence and analyze internal software decisions. He now helps agents with technology decisions and marketing through reviewing software and tech for Inman.