New hyperlocal home search portal gears up for launch

A new home search portal, Naberly, is targeting real estate agents who are frustrated with the effort of driving traffic to their own websites.

Launching in Washington, Oregon and California initially — but marketed as a national portal — it has been designed to appeal to millennial consumers, who want instant alerts when a property is listed and immediate access to their agent. The site also asks more in-depth questions from buyers on their searches for a better house hunting experience.

Business partner Musong Kim describes it as an “agent -centric public portal.”

Naberly has already secured some partner agents in Washington, Oregon and California — and will then expand to New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Pennsylvania by the end of the first quarter this year. It’s founded on a cooperative idea to grow real estate relationships hyper-locally between consumers, agents and their networks.

An opportunity in IDX

The startup was founded by Seattle-based tech entrepreneurs Jeff La Croix and Kim, who were building an IDX real estate website for a local broker three years ago and saw an opportunity.

“Nowadays it’s easy for an agent to get an IDX website, but once you have a website, the problem remains: How do you get traffic?” said La Croix.

Agents get a personal real estate portal with the benefits of a national consumer brand, La Croix explained.

The subscription deal being offered by Naberly is $299 a month and includes social media marketing and target marketing. Tools will include a contact management system, lightweight CRM, listing alerts tied to MLS data, market reports, a real time communication platform and a home valuation page for agents.

“We are able to do it at a low cost because it is cooperative marketing that we do,” said Kim, who added anyone serious about online marketing was spending up to $2000 a month.

Exclusive relationship

Kim and La Croix are keeping Naberly exclusive at this point.

“The general rule of thumb is there will be one (Naberly) agent per 10,000 people, though in metro areas that will be different,” said La Croix.

There are two ways agents can work with clients. They can add existing clients to Naberly or for new consumers who come in and register, the site will match them to a local real estate agent.

“We don’t send a lead out to multiple agents at one time. We send it to one and ’round robin’ it.  Agents will have about three or five minutes to respond,” said Kim.

Activity Feed

“It’s very confusing for a consumer who looks for information with a portal and then gets contacted by three or four agents,” added La Croix.

Agents who want to partner with Naberly will fill out questionnaires to see if they are right for the site.

“We want to make sure we target the right people,” said Kim. “It can be anyone from a top producer to a new agent.”

Left to right, Musong Kim and Jeff La Croix, founders.

Agent partners can use Naberly as their own personal website.

“When we create a profile for an agent they get a referral code, agent ID, and can share that contact information like a digital business card,” said La Croix.

One stand-out feature

One stand-out feature with Naberly is a proprietary Slack-style communication platform between the agent and consumer so they can converse to and fro when on a house search. Husbands and wives can share an account so it can work well for local or remote buyers.

Said La Croix: ” It’s very easy to use and great for the agent and it’s bringing a lot of benefit to the consumer — all the communication can be centralized.”

Naberly has been designed to eliminate consumers’ frustrations with the current portals on offer by building a more intelligent search platform.

“We built this platform focused on millennials, who will be buying over the next five or six years,” said Kim.

Email Gill South.