Acquisitions can aid growth. Some times by up to a magnitude.
Or at least that’s the promise to us when we spoke with Abode founder Kyle Stoner. Abode, a fast-growing real-estate tech firm backed by Techstars and which markets itself as one of “Techstars’ fastest-growing start up(s)” is taking the real-estate brokerage industry head on. From our view, Abode is a follow up to Zillow and Trulia’s earlier inroads into realtor dominance over real estate listings and commission rates.
Abode’s own answer to 6% real estate broker commissions is a $35 flat fee and pick-your-own buy side commission. Grit Daily spoke with Abode cofounder Kyle Stoner to see what’s next after the acquisition of nationally licensed brokerage, USRealty.
Grit Daily: Share your acquisition news. Why now?
Kyle Stoner: We have acquired USRealty.com and the entire team has joined Abode.
We were excited to acquire USRealty for a few reasons. The team is incredibly talented and brought over years of expertise in the flat-fee, discount brokerage space. We are able to leverage USRealty’s national brokerage license footprint to quickly expand our current offerings to many more clients.
For context, Abode had built out a ton of technology on the buy-side while USRealty was focused on the sell-side. This gave us a step-function growth opportunity to leap ahead and begin serving far more sellers than we were able to do on our own at Abode. The acquisition was 100% complimentary.
GD: Abode isn’t quite a household name like Zillow or Trulia. Why should we be using it? How?
KS: At Abode we believe that browsing has been fixed. It’s buying and selling that is still broken.
Zillow and Trulia are great for browsing homes. Abode also has a clean, easy-to-use browsing feature. We’re focused on making the process of selling a home much less costly while also streamlining the process.
Instead of hiring a real estate agent and paying the standard 6% commission, you can list with us for as low as $35 and choose your own buy-side commission. Our average client saves $10,000.
You should be using us to list and sell your home quickly while saving money. We sharply reduce the cost by using software to automate much of the listing process. You can choose the list your home using our online tool and literally be on the MLS and every real estate website in minutes.
GD: What’s behind the Abode name?
KS: My co-founder Carson and I were both buying homes a couple years ago and were struck by how convoluted and expensive the process was. This broken process motivated us to build Abode and we wanted a name that was simple, clean, and easy to understand matching our vision for what buying or selling a home should be.
a·bode1
/əˈbōd/
noun
- a place of residence; a house or home.
- “my humble abode”
|
|
- residence.
- “a place of abode”
- ARCHAIC
- a stay; a sojourn.
GD: Let’s talk numbers. What do user stats look like?
KS: Last year we went from zero to more than $1 billion in annual home sales on our platform. We are now serving thousands of customers nationwide and growing very rapidly.
GD: What does the revenue picture look like?
KS: We had a seven-figure annual revenue run-rate in 2018. Our revenue for 2019 is on pace to be an order of magnitude higher for 2019.
For more Grit Daily real-estate coverage, check out our piece on TransparentCity.
