From the Desk of Dan Amdur, CEO, Moving Station/QuickBuy®
Dear Partners,
In a December 5th Inman News article, entitled “Opendoor faces 'existential' crisis as iBuying fights for survival” it took the author until paragraph 26 to share, “To be clear, no one was writing an obituary of Opendoor or iBuying. But it was apparent that many questions remain about how the concept can succeed going forward.”
Below are my thoughts:
Consumer demand for iBuying is strong and growing.
QuickBuy and our iBuy partnership has been extremely successful and expanding.
The void left by others, expands opportunities for our partnership.
iBuying will succeed going forward as consumer demand is clear, but maybe only for those of us who have proven skills and efficiencies.
It starts by looking at what has worked and building upon those successes and looking at what did not work and fixing those.
Our Combined Success
What iBuyers did do well was identify consumer demand for simplicity and ease in the real estate transaction. That consumer demand has only continued to grow, leaving us – QuickBuy and our broker partners - to serve the consumer and respond to their quest for convenience, certainty, and confidence in every real estate transaction.
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“What cannot be measured in dollars is the value agents bring to the iBuy process.”
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Together in 2022, we have successfully achieved an 8% capture rate on offers during one of the hottest sellers’ markets in history. Pause for a moment and consider what that means – even at a time where sellers did not have to do much to get homes market ready and could potentially receive multiple offers while negotiating their desired closing dates, a whopping 8% still opted for an even easier solution. Clearly, today’s consumer is not as price sensitive as one would expect. They want the home sale to be fast and easy and they are willing to pay the “cost of convenience” to make that happen (less stress).
Additionally, agents who used QuickBuy as a sales and marketing tool, on average captured over 70% of those listing opportunities. Our high-water mark broker partners had over 17% of their QuickBuy offers accepted and captured 80% of the listing opportunities in 2022. Note, 40% elected the QuickBuy Leaseback option. In an industry where the average capture hovers around 50-60%, these figures speak volumes about the consumers’ appreciation for choice when it comes to home sale solutions and your agents’ ability to provide that choice.
Interceding iBuyers continue to fail where agents succeed.
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“You can’t lose over a billion dollars in just a few months without a great deal of demand.”
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You may have seen the recent news. More iBuyers continue to leave the space and/or lose money trying to figure out how to penetrate the real estate market and operate their business. As evident by their losses, that agenda has proven to be tougher than anticipated. What is clear, the customer demand is strong for iBuying. The value of convenience and certainty around an iBuy offer is an attractive proposition to the consumer. You can’t lose over a billion dollars in just a few months without a great deal of demand.
QuickBuy and our broker partnership differ from the others because:
We are not a tech company trying to disintermediate the agent from the real estate process. QuickBuy is a program developed by brokers for brokers and our combined experience and expertise will be the true basis of success.
We work together combining the agent’s skills and relationships with time-tested operations in a pure partnering relationship.
QuickBuy underwriting has been perfected over 25 years and is done with a unique combination of highly skilled asset managers and proprietary technology, which makes for an accurate and scalable result.
iBuyers spent an estimated 8% per unit in customer acquisition cost, attempting to capture homeowners ahead of the agent and believing that the agent was part of the “stress” in real estate. Together, we have proven that the agent’s sphere of influence will always choose the agent over tech, as long as that agent can present a variety of choices and solutions that meet the sellers’ needs.
As a private company, QuickBuy operates on a sustainable financial model that demands profitability through a modest but reasonable margin.
For decades Moving Station has embraced and valued the existing infrastructure of brokerages and their agents. QuickBuy has quietly, yet consistently, demonstrated skill in accurately underwriting, inventorying, and selling properties. We have always, and will continue to, rely on local market experts (agents), our trained professionals, proprietary technology, incorporating fundamentals such as location, style, taste, floor plan, market demand, and hold periods into our pricing. Functions an algorithm has proven incapable of doing.
Moving Forward
Selling and buying real estate should be less stressful for the consumer. The lack of certainty and effort needed is the cause of that stress. The agent never contributed to this friction, to the contrary, their literal hand on the shoulder of the customer as the knowledgeable local advocate is comforting. Together we can provide the consumer with a choice on how to sell their home and options that can provide certainty and convenience (at a reasonable price); or the ability to sell real estate traditionally. Combined, we can identify the consumer early in the decision-making process and arm the agent with tools and information to allow the consumer to make an informed decision on how they move forward.
The 2023 spring market is right around the corner, and as iBuyers close shop, the void left behind creates more opportunity for agents to leverage their QuickBuy solutions to serve more customers. Today is a great opportunity to shout about the virtues of your local agent and their ability to provide “home sale solutions for the customers’ situation”.
QuickBuy is here to stay, as the only national iBuyers supporting brokerages, we are prepared to help you meet the seller demand for immediate cash offer solutions. Together we’ve got this.
Thank you,
Dan Amdur