Broker Public Portal’s (BPP) consumer-facing Homesnap has landed $14 million in funding, BPP recently announced. The Series B round was led by Updata Partners, with participation from Moderne Ventures and individual investors. Homesnap’s capital raised now totals $32.8 million, and includes investor Revolution Ventures, the venture capital fund founded by AOL co-founder Steve Case, Tige Savage and David Golden.
“This is strong investor affirmation of what we have been saying—that Broker Public Portal has something companies selling ads do not: MLS and especially broker ownership that always puts industry stakeholders’ interests first,” says John Mosey, vice chairman of BPP. Mosey also heads up NorthstarMLS, which supports over 17,000 REALTORS® in Minnesota and Western Wisconsin.
“This huge boost in funding is going to help accelerate the growth of BPP with Homesnap,” Mosey says, “and, as BPP has promised, Homesnap is fantastic technology that will keep on getting better and better.”
“This is a win for agents, brokers, consumers and the real estate industry,” says Steve Barnes, co-founder of Homesnap. Barnes says the funding will support the development of new premium tools that allow agents to further increase productivity in the field and expand Homesnap’s suite of automated digital marketing services for agents and brokers.
“Homesnap delivers what consumers and agents want, and what the real estate industry needs,” says John Mazur, CEO of Homesnap. “Now investors are saying we want to be part of that success too.”
Mosey believes the investors have taken note of the rapid rise of BPP with Homesnap because of its remarkable industry support, which has translated into loyalty among brokers and agents and high satisfaction among consumers. Real estate agents have invited more than 19 million clients and contacts to access MLS listing data, and 8.5 million consumers have engaged with their agents through Homesnap. BPP with Homesnap is available to 125 MLSs serving over 800,000 agents. More than 20 million consumers visited the Broker Public Portal in 2017.
“We look at over 4,500 real estate related technology companies every year, and Homesnap has created a value proposition for the industry that outshines almost everything else we’ve seen,” says Constance Freedman of Moderne Ventures. “One of the many attractive things about Homesnap is that it was built with the best interests of agents, brokers and our industry in mind. This has made all the difference in driving adoption of Homesnap across the country.”
Broker Public Portal with Homesnap is designed to help real estate professionals generate listing exposure and leads and encourage prospects and clients to connect and collaborate directly with an agent. Agents and brokers receive free leads from the Broker Public Portal, in contrast to the large marketing portals, and home searchers are always connected directly to the listing agent, who is best able to answer questions about the listing. A real estate industry-born technology initiative, Broker Public Portal with Homesnap now features over 100 million property records and over 59 million active and sold listings.
Broker Public Portal with Homesnap is the only national online home search experience that gives consumers access to the same real-time information as the professional REALTOR®, directly from the MLS, free of advertising clutter. Agents pay no additional fees to have their listings exposed to millions of consumers every month other than their regular MLS dues. Agents’ contact information appears exclusively next to their listings for free, and other agents are not allowed to pay to advertise on those listings.
In January, BPP announced it grew 150 percent in its first year since it launched as Homesnap. Homesnap reported its revenue grew 250 percent year-over-year from 2016 to 2017, with 71 percent of the nation’s REALTORS® accessing Homesnap Pro.
For more information, please visit www.homesnap.com/bpp.
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