A week ago, Lone Wolf announced their Marketplace. At launch, there were fewer than a dozen products available to agents and consumers that were tied into the marketplace. They include Earnnest, eCommission, Updater, PrestoIntelligence, and EyeSpy360 among others like Real Estate Webmasters. However, as the announcement stated, this initial group was the first group of many. Lone Wolf has set its sights on delivering a tool that would not only allow agents to acquire business tools that they can use to grow their business, but a full suite of home closing and settlement solutions that provide consumers with choices for mortgage, title, insurance, escrow, and other services.
Title Insurance is the first settlement service that was announced today. In a press release, Lone Wolf recognizes their partnership with RamQuest, an Austin based title insurance company and settlement service that operates under the product name of Closing Market in all 50 states of the United States of America. RamQuest’s Closing Market is also a marketplace that has 56 partners today. In this case, Lone Wolf Marketplace is like eBay connecting to Amazon – marketplace connecting to marketplace.
For many years, the leaders in title insurance have been brands like Fidelity National Title (34%), First American Title (25%), Old Republic (15%), and Steward Title (10%), with plenty of other contenders (16%) according to NationalMortgageProfessional. Those title firms currently underwrite nearly $15 billion in title insurance, and many of them are already included in the Closing Market.
This service is now live in zipForms Plus Marketplace, which includes the ability to send digital orders; sync real-time updates; move documents through a secure channel; send/receive file notes, and automate status updates. Lone Wolf did not specifically call out the RamQuest integration with TransactionDesk (the product group that operated under the Instanet brand), but they did indicate that RamQuest will be available to all 1.4 million subscribers to Lone Wolf’s transaction management solutions. Presumably, RamQuest will be available on Transaction Desk soon.
The dream of contract to close is coming into focus here, bound together by like-minded companies who recognize the value of controlling the consumer’s options as they select their closing choices. This has long been the vision of many brands in real estate including Home Services of America, Realogy, Keller Williams, RE/MAX, Redfin, and many of The Realty Alliance firms and Leading RE members. REALTOR® associations are also deep into this strategy with the assembly of their Affiliate memberships. Everyone is seeking to deliver a complete service to delight the consumer, but also to add service fee revenue to their business. Out of the gate, it appears that the Lone Wolf Marketplace is structured to reach the consumer first by nature of attaching service options to consumers as soon as a buyer or seller contract is initiated by the REALTOR®. Lone Wolf transaction management platforms process about 75% of all residential transactions in America.
Our first article on the Lone Wolf Marketplace is available here.
