The Board of Managers of the National Broker Portal, a joint venture between Broker Public Portal (BPP) and Homesnap, recently announced that Joseph “Joe” Rand of Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate (BHGRE) Rand Realty, has been named executive director of the Broker Public Portal (BPP). Rand will also remain the chief creative officer for BHGRE Rand Realty, one of the largest brokerages in the New York tri-state region according to RISMedia’s 2020 Power Broker Report, with nearly 30 offices, 1,200 agents and over $2.3 billion in real estate transactions last year.
As executive director for BPP, Rand will serve as “the face of a movement,” which has grown to include more than 240 multiple listing services (MLSs), representing over 90 percent of all property listings nationwide, according to the company.
“Joe Rand is one of the most trusted and well-known thought leaders in real estate,” said John Mosey, a National Broker Public Portal board member, chairman of the BPP and CEO of NorthstarMLS. “He is uniquely qualified—with his experience as a broker, agent educator and industry insider—to take the Broker Public Portal with Homesnap movement to every market in America.”
According to the company, Rand will be “the voice of the BPP” at industry events, serving as a spokesperson for the organization and contributing articles and opinion pieces about the BPP. Rand will also be the industry liaison for the BPP, encouraging individual MLSs and brokers to join the BPP and expanding this industry movement.
“With his deep experience as a highly respected broker and agent educator, Joe is the perfect person to represent the Broker Public Portal and bring its message to an even wider audience,” said Steve Barnes, president and co-founder of Homesnap. “We are lucky to have Joe aboard and look forward to working with him to extend the reach of this important industry initiative.”
A longtime advocate and founding member of the Broker Public Portal—a national portal that emphasizes it is committed to pro-consumer and pro-agent Fair Display Guidelines—Rand said his mission is helping the BPP achieve its goals.
BPP was started with three goals, Rand told RISMedia.
1. “Create a top-notch agent- and client-friendly search portal.”
2. “Build a comprehensive platform for agent-client collaboration.”
3. “Get them all in the hands of every agent and client the country.”
“With the Homesnap app and the Homesnap Pro agent tools, they’ve achieved the first two goals. Now, it’s my job to reach the third by spreading the word, and getting every MLS in the country on board,” said Rand. “My two-year goal working with the BPP with Homesnap is to make it the No. 1 real estate search site in the country. We have an opportunity to take the BPP to the forefront of the conversation about our industry’s future.”
Rand will be presenting during a Strategy Session—”Reevaluating Costs: Making the Tough Decisions”—at this year’s Real Estate CEO Exchange, which is being co-presented by RISMedia and the National Association of REALTORS® as an all-day virtual event on Sept. 17 from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. EST.
“I challenge any agent in a Homesnap market to do what I did before accepting the job—take a “taste test.” Get two phones out—one on Homesnap and one on any other real estate portal,” Rand told RISMedia. “Then run searches, save properties, put them both through their paces. They’ll see what I saw, which is that Homesnap is better than any other real estate search app on the market. ”
In 2019, Rand was honored by RISMedia as an inaugural member of the Real Estate Newsmakers Hall of Fame, which recognizes an exclusive group of industry luminaries who have gone above and beyond in their contributions to the real estate industry.
Rand is also the author of two popular books about real estate and has been a featured speaker at dozens of industry conferences and conventions. He is known for pioneering the concept of “Client-Oriented Real Estate” or “CORE,” an educational philosophy designed to raise the level of client service provided by the industry by teaching agents how to be “great at their jobs.”
Due to his new responsibilities with the BPP, Rand will step down from his additional role as general counsel of Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Rand Realty but will still lead his company’s career development and educational programs, and provide regular training programs to its agents.
Rand earned both his undergraduate and a law degree from Georgetown University and a master’s degree in law from Stanford University. Before entering real estate, he was both an attorney for a Wall Street law firm and a law professor at Brooklyn and Fordham Law Schools. A longtime resident of Manhattan, he now lives in the suburbs of the city, in the Hudson River village of Nyack, N.Y.
