Alain Pinel Realtors has partnered with five companies specializing in real estate tech, among them popular digital marketing startups Adwerx and Cloud CMA.
The San Francisco-based brokerage, which was founded in 1990 and now has more than 1,400 agents in 30 offices and is ranked as the 7th largest brokerage by volume according to Real Trends and 10th according to the newer Swanepoel Mega 1000 rankings, is also teaming with home search platform RealScout, customer relationship management platform Contactually and ActivePipe, which helps agents assemble automated emails with home property information.
“We went through every possible use case and different type of agent and found this is what would helps them bring in sales,” Zane Burnett, vice president of digital innovation and technology, told Inman. “We wanted to create a catch-all to make sure nothing fell through the cracks.”
The five partners are all startups developing new technologies for use in real estate transactions. For Alain Pinel Realtors, the tech strategy is all part of the company’s larger push to automate more of the work they currently do as a brokerage — in particular, by freeing up agents’ time from certain housekeeping jobs to focus on leads and sales.
“We want agents to continue doing what they have always been doing but more effectively,” Burnett said, adding that it made more sense to leverage the work already being done by real estate startups than to build a single in-house platform.
“With this strategy, and with these partners, Alain Pinel Realtors is positioned to extend its leadership into a future that will require adaptability, speed and a ceaseless effort to innovate,” Rainy Hake Austin, APR executive vice president and chief operating officer, said in a statement.
Based in San Francisco, APR specializes in selling high-end properties in the Bay Area. It is the largest private real estate company in California.
Correction: this story has been updated after publication to include the latest accurate ranking on Real Trends. The previous number was erroneous.
