HomeServices of America has acquired real estate strategy, research and creative firm 1000WATT, Inman has learned exclusively.
The move brings the company’s roughly 10-person team, proprietary research and marketing capabilities inside one of the nation’s largest residential real estate enterprises.
The deal makes 1000WATT an internal resource for HomeServices’ operating companies and HSF Affiliates, including the Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices franchise network, the companies announced Thursday. Financial terms were not disclosed.
1000WATT co-founder Brian Boero will become chief marketing and strategy officer of HomeServices, while fellow co-founder Marc Davison will serve as chief creative officer.
The acquisition comes as HomeServices works to transform itself from what CEO Chris Kelly described as a historically decentralized holding company into a more active parent company that provides technology, marketing and other services across its network.
Kelly told Inman that HomeServices evaluates acquisitions based on whether they add a capability to the broader business rather than simply increasing agent count or transaction volume.
“One of the obvious opportunities that we had not filled yet was a true team at the HomeServices level that was solely focused on branding, voice, positioning within the market [and] being ahead of what is really going to be important to the agent and consumer going forward,” Kelly told Inman.
Rather than hire a single marketing executive, Kelly said HomeServices saw an opportunity to bring in a team it had already worked closely with on several major initiatives.
“The idea of them becoming an in-house agency and partner with us really just made a lot of sense,” he added.
Led by Boero and Davison, 1000WATT has spent nearly two decades advising real estate brokerages, technology firms and other industry companies on branding, strategy, research and creative work.
The firm has worked with HomeServices for roughly the past year, including helping develop OnePoint, the company’s effort to connect brokerage, mortgage, title, insurance and other services into a more unified consumer experience.
Boero told Inman that HomeServices had already assembled much of the infrastructure other real estate companies are now trying to build, and said the opportunity to help connect and position those businesses convinced 1000WATT to go all-in on the company.
“This feels like the right project and the right company and the right enterprise to focus on,” Boero said. “I have been in this industry for 30 years — not just because it’s a way to make money, but because I find this business to be so meaningful and so consequential.”
Boero said 1000WATT’s immediate mandate will include continuing to build the OnePoint brand and articulating HomeServices’ broader “complete real estate experience.”
The acquisition also makes 1000WATT’s proprietary consumer and agent research platform an exclusive benefit for the HomeServices network, which Boero said includes roughly 60,000 agents, 46 brokerage companies and 220 franchised offices.
1000WATT will no longer take outside client work, although members of the team will continue to publish industry commentary. Boero said the firm will retire its Tuesday newsletter, The Dose, but that he plans to continue writing Friday Flash. The company also will no longer host standalone 1000WATT events.
Davison said the entire 1000WATT team joined HomeServices, a condition he described as important from the beginning of the discussions.
“That was the mandate from Day One. You don’t get Marc and Brian. You get 1000WATT,” Davison told Inman. “They not only get 1000WATT, but they retain our process. They retain the way we work.”
Davison said the roughly 10-person firm deliberately remained small because of the difficulty of finding creative professionals who also deeply understand residential real estate.
The acquisition follows several other major HomeServices initiatives this year, including the rollout of a unified agent technology platform and the addition of mortgage servicing.
Kelly said those capability investments could eventually set the stage for more traditional brokerage acquisitions. HomeServices has been having conversations with other brokerages over the past six to 18 months, he said, as the company builds a platform that prospective acquisition targets could plug into.
“We wanted to have something to bring them onto,” Kelly said. “As we kind of get through this period and we really have our platform, it becomes a much more attractive destination for some of the companies that we’re talking to.”
