{"id":14353,"date":"2019-02-27T19:11:27","date_gmt":"2019-02-27T19:11:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/compass-acquires-contactually-a-crm-provider-to-the-real-estate-industry.html"},"modified":"2019-02-27T19:11:27","modified_gmt":"2019-02-27T19:11:27","slug":"compass-acquires-contactually-a-crm-provider-to-the-real-estate-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/compass-acquires-contactually-a-crm-provider-to-the-real-estate-industry.html","title":{"rendered":"Compass acquires Contactually, a CRM provider to the real estate industry"},"content":{"rendered":"

Compass<\/a>, the real estate tech platform that is now worth $4.4 billion<\/a>, has made an acquisition to give its agents a boost when it comes to looking for good leads on properties to sell. It is acquiring Contactually<\/a>, an AI-based CRM platform designed specifically for the industry, which includes features like linking up a list of homes sold by a brokerage with records of sales in the area and other property indexes to determine which properties might be good targets to tap for future listings.<\/p>\n

Contactually <\/a> had already been powering Compass\u2019s own CRM service that it launched last year so there is already a degree of integration between the two.<\/p>\n

Terms of the deal are not being disclosed. Crunchbase<\/a> notes that Contactually had raised around $18 million from VCs that included Rally Ventures, Grotech and Point Nine Capital, and it was last valued at around $30 million in 2016, according to PitchBook<\/a>. From what I understand, the startup had strong penetration in the market so it\u2019s likely that the price was a bit higher than this previous valuation.<\/p>\n

The plan is to bring over all of Contactually\u2019s team of 32 employees, led by Zvi Band, the co-founder and CEO, to integrate the company\u2019s product into Compass\u2019s <\/a> platform completely. They will report to CTO Joseph Sirosh and head of product Eytan Seidman. It will also mean a bigger operation for Compass in Washington, DC, which is where Contactually had been based.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Contactually team has worked for the past 8 years to build a best-in-class CRM that aggregates relationships and automatically documents every touchpoint,\u201d said Band in a statement \u201cWe are proud that our investment into machine learning has resulted in new features like Best Time to Email and other data-driven, follow-up recommendations which help agents be more effective in their day-to-day. After working extensively with the Compass team, it was apparent that joining forces would accelerate our missions of building the future of the industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the time being, customers who are already using the product \u2014 and a large number of real estate brokers and agents in the US already were, at prices<\/a> that ranged from $59\/month to $399\/month depending on the level of service \u2014 will continue their contracts as before, for the time being.<\/p>\n

I suspect that the longer-term plan, however, will be a little different: you have to wonder if agents who compete against Compass would be happy to use a service where their data is being processed by it, and for Compass itself, I would suspect that having this tech for itself would give it an edge over the others.<\/p>\n

Compass, I understand from sources, is on track to make $2 billion in revenues in 2019 (its 2018 targets were $1 billion on $34 billion in property sales, and it had previously said it would be doubling that this year). Now in 100 cities, it\u2019s come a long way from its founding in 2012\u00a0Ori Allon and Robert Reffkin.<\/p>\n

The bigger picture beyond real estate is that, as with many other analog industries, those who are tackling them with tech-first approaches are sweeping up not only existing business, but in many cases helping the whole market to expand.\u00a0Contactually, as a tool that can help source potential properties for sale that owners hadn\u2019t previously considered putting on the market, could end up serving that very end for Compass.<\/p>\n

The focus on using tech to storm into a legacy industry is also coming at an interesting time. As we\u2019ve pointed out before, the housing market is\u00a0predicted<\/a> to\u00a0cool<\/a> this year, and that will put the squeeze on agents who do not have strong networks of clients and the tools to maximise whatever opportunities there are out there to list and sell properties.<\/p>\n

The likes of Opendoor<\/a> \u2014 which appears to be raising money and inching closer to Compass<\/a> in terms of valuation \u2014 is also trying out a different model, which essentially involves becoming a middle part in the chain, buying properties from sellers and selling them on to buyers, to speed up the process and cut out some of the expenses for the end users. That approach underscores the fact that, while the infusion of technology is an inevitable trend, there will be multiple ways of applying that.<\/p>\n

This appears to be Compass\u2019s first full acquisition of a tech startup, although it has made partial acquihires<\/a> in the past.<\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunchIt\/~3\/aRObb9teLgU\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Compass, the real estate tech platform that is now worth $4.4 billion, has made an acquisition to give its agents a boost when it comes to looking for good leads <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-14353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-enterprise-software","tag-enterprise"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t