Homes.com launches a game changer
If you look around the real estate industry, there is always a quiet giant tending to its business and moving along steadily without rocking the boat too much. Unless you were on vacation this week, you saw a flurry of press releases, blog posts, twitter posts, facebook messages, and Linkedin message about the release of Homes Connect and the demise of the AdvancedAccess brands.
As a consultant, I watched in yearning as Dominion acquired nearly a dozen real estate technology brands. From the beginning, it seemed logical. Dominion was a publishing company, the biggest in the real estate industry (along with automotive and others). Print had a strong run for decades, built corporate wealth, and continues to yield some results. The Internet became a threat, so Dominion took on the opportunity to change. Dominion’s investment in technology assets represented a diversification of product offerings, and delivered a long term strategy for generating revenue from their loyal customer base.
It took the company a long time to put all of the pieces together. The benefit of a large and financially secure company is the luxury of time. Their strategy was to allow each business unit to operate independently. I suppose it allowed them to learn the virtues of each company, appreciate the technical and management resources, and understand the culture. Moreover, they were able to listen to the challenges each company faced, listen to the customers, and understand the customer needs that their products satisfied in the marketplace. They went to school.
Now they are relaunching the company. One strong brand delivering a breadth of complimentary products. Weak business units and underperforming staff are being removed. They are uniting the management team, cross-pollinating products and support services, structuring one source for communications and marketing. Nearly everything that was managed independently is now being managed homogenously. They handpicked their best team and put them on the field. Let the game begin.
I think that Homes.com will be empowered by their new structure and corporate unification. Moreover, I think that it will improve their service offering to the industry. It will not be easy, a huge restructuring like this will always brings new challenges. It disrupts operational patterns and individual responsibilities in the short run. Everyone will need to relearn parts of their job, depend on new teammates, and aim at new business goals. Theie key is to deliver something better when the dust settles.
About Homes.com
Inducing HomesMediaSolutions. Homes.com now offers a top real estate portal for customer acquisition, agent and broker websites for buyer and seller real estate information, excellent school and neighborhood information to inform customers, virtual office websites for client management, full CRM for lifetime customer management, social media prospecting and other online marketing, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, CMAs, and so on. As of today, it is all now available under one roof. Agents, Brokers, and Franchises can now operate their business on one dashboard, with one login, and every tool competitively priced with competitive features.
Disclosure: Homes.com is not a WAV Group client, but we have deep friendships with the company and its management team. Homes.com is a partner of RE Technology (WAV Group partners are investors) – supporting MLSs and Associations in delivering excellent technology information to REALTORS and Brokers. We appreciate their support.
I realize that we all depend on “spell check”, but we should never publish an article that someone hasn’t proofed for misused words.
You are right – sorry about that.