Real estate website provider Placester has launched a program aimed integrating the tools and services of various tech vendors into its platform.
Vendors who join Placester’s “Industry Partner” program will be able to put their products at the fingertips of tens of thousands of real estate agents who use Placester’s platform.
“This new partner program enables us to link leading providers in a way that adds tremendous value, reach and scale for Placester customers,” said Frederick Townes, chief operating officer of Placester, in a statement.
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The program is split up into three vendor categories: apps, data and services.
3 early partners and $50 million in funding
In launching the Industry Partner program, Placester announced three early partners: BrandCo (service partner), a provider of real estate branding guidance and content, Open Home Pro (app partner), a sign-in and lead-follow up app for open houses, and Maponics (data partner), a data provider whose neighborhood boundaries are used by a wide range of popular property search websites.
Fueled by $50 million in funding, Placester has sought to become the dominant provider of real estate websites to agents and brokerages. And it’s made big strides towards that goal in the last year or so, signing deals with Keller Williams Realty, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) and Re/Max Integra, the largest Re/Max sub-franchisor representing 30 percent of Re/Max broker-owners and sales professionals worldwide.
Placester offers websites for as little as $5 a month to Realtors (thanks to an agreement with NAR), and $10 a month for non-Realtors. The websites websites provide IDX (Internet data exchange) search, mobile-friendly responsive design, lead capture features and blogging capabilities.
Agents can also pay for add-ons, including a customer relationship management system; drip marketing; online advertising through Google AdWords, Facebook and other channels; and coaching and support.
Placester has said that natural language search for listing search tools and web analytics that show how visitors interact with Placester sites are on its product roadmap. It’s also hinted that it’s working on a mobile app.
