Congratulations to both Royal LePage and Inside Real Estate on the announcement of their partnership which positions kvCORE as the technology platform for the company’s 18,000 real estate agents.
Canada is not far afield of the United States in terms of the requirement for leading firms to offer consumers a better digital experience than the real estate portals, but Royal LePage is outperforming most or all of their peers. This move to increase their investment in the consumer search experience, and deliver the wide variety of tools integrated into kvCORE, will create a boost to the company’s already impressive performance.
The solution developed for Royal LePage is a custom, enterprise version of the kvCORE platform that is popular with top agents & teams in America at large enterprise firms including Wiechert, Keyes, EXP and many others. Brokers who are fulfilling the needs of their top producing agents and teams are investing far more in technology than firms who are simply acquiring technology that allows them to say “yes, we provide you a co-branded IDX site.” Getting teams to adopt the broker’s technology is a high bar.
There are not many enterprise technology firms in the United States that have gone through the engineering hurdle to offer services in Canada. Most firms don’t have full MLS coverage across Canada like Inside Real Estate does, and the effort to support dual language (Canadian English and French) entails a lot of translation. It is like building four sites – two for desktop and two for mobile.
Royal LePage calls the tech platform rlpSPHERE, and sets the bar to perform for top producers and teams. The tech gives an added layer of team and agent-specific functionality and design customization that many co-branded technology solutions do not allow. More importantly, the entire company now has access to online advertising for lead generation built-in. Bilingual ad support and CRM tie in must have been fun for IRE to develop.
I have always been impressed with Phil Soper, Carolyn Cheng, and their stellar executive team. This announcement is not just hype about what’s to come, but rather at the heels of a well thought-out and successful rollout across their entire organization. Once again they demonstrate why Royal LePage is the established leader across Canada. In this aggressive and competitive market, there is no time to allow an enterprise technology platform to stagnate with agents and teams. The market is moving too quickly. Royal LePage is poised for growth and success today and in the years ahead.
