Douglas Elliman has launched Elius, a new Google Cloud-backed artificial intelligence company that will allow the NYC-based firm to accelerate its “evolution into a technology-forward enterprise.”
Elius will be integrated into Douglas Elliman’s business in several ways, with the firm planning to use the company to:
- Simplify operations, improve productivity and scalability, and achieve significant savings in non-commission operating expenses
- Optimize pricing strategy, market intelligence, buyer targeting and absorption forecasting for the firm’s $27 billion development marketing pipeline.
- Replace Douglas Elliman Realty’s current transaction, customer relationship management, lead generation and market intelligence tech suite.
- Streamline Elliman Global’s cross-border business and expansion across key global luxury markets.
Douglas Elliman CEO and President Michael S. Liebowitz said Elius will enable the brokerage to effectively monetize and protect its private luxury real estate data.
The leader said brokerages have gotten used to relying on third-party platforms and portals to power their businesses. However, those systems don’t meet the need for a non-linear home shopping experience that allows agents to keep up with consumers as they ebb and flow through their real estate journeys.
Michael S. Liebowitz | Douglas Elliman
“The next era of this business will be defined by intelligence,” Liebowitz said in a press release. “For generations, residential real estate has been organized around the transaction — and for just as long, the data that real estate transactions generate has been monetized by nearly everyone except the brokerages that create it. We are changing that model and taking it back.”
“Elius will launch as a new business that will be designed to utilize our most valuable and underappreciated assets — our current, future and historical proprietary data of the industry’s premier luxury network — to create opportunities for new products, revenue streams, and businesses beyond brokerage,” he added. “We believe this has the potential to create a materially larger addressable market, stronger and more durable economics, and a fundamentally different future for our stockholders, agent advisors and staff.”
Elius is self-funded, with Douglas Elliman using $100 million in cash and cash equivalents to build the company. The firm said it expects to see a return on investment within the next three years as the company consolidates its technology stack under Elius and starts generating non-commission operation expense savings.
Douglas Elliman has spent the past year steadily repositioning itself after a few tough quarters of earnings results, during which the firm’s year-over-year revenue ticked down amid market headwinds.
Over the past year, the firm has added a new chief of staff, chief strategy officer, chief technology officer and chief marketing officer to its leadership lineup, all of whom have strong backgrounds in growth strategy, platform development and digital technology.
Douglas Elliman also launched a private listing network in September, with Liebowitz saying it reflects the brokerage’s commitment to “the power of choice by providing private, public, coming-soon and delayed listing options.”
All July, it’s Luxury Month, and we’re going deep — surveying the market, spotlighting the top producers who own it and bringing you the playbook for breaking into high-end deals. The month caps off at Luxury Connect in San Diego, where we’ll announce this year’s Golden I Club honorees.
