SocialMLS Harnessing Power of Facebook for Real Estate Listings

A newly launched Facebook app is helping real estate agents give their listings that personal touch that goes the extra mile towards making a sale. Rev1 Ventures Portfolio Company SocialMLS launched their app yesterday to automate the social side of real estate listings.

Founder Chris Sauerzopf says that a real estate agent has thousands of ways to share and disseminate information across social media platforms, but SocialMLS brings the sellers into the fold.

“The sellers are able to share the story of them moving, them having this life change, in their network,” Sauerzopf says. 

Information about a for-sale home is coming from someone who knows it well versus just a real estate agent. The system leverages human curiosity. People in the seller’s Facebook network will be more intrigued by a post from one of their friends about selling their house and their experiences there (and more likely to click) than if a real estate agent posts a general message.

“The by-product of that is we are increasing listing website traffic 10 times what they are normally getting right now,” Sauerzopf says. 

SocialMLS serves to make the process easy by automating much of the work. They on-board a real estate agent who wishes to use the service. Then SocialMLS will walk the seller through crafting four posts that will go out over a two-week period, with all of the social activity tracked through the app. Real estate agents can then use that data to create more targeted pages or ads.

As SocialMLS gains users, they are offering one free listing. From there, tiered plans are available. Agents can purchase three listing for $27 per month or 10 for $79 per month. SocialMLS will work with an agent on a quote for anything over 10 per month.

The newly launched app is actually version two of SocialMLS, having originally launched in April of 2014. In September of that year, Sauerzopf learned of Rev1’s Concept Academy. At the workshop that serves to help startups validate their market, he found that while the core of his idea for SocialMLS was strong, the execution needed some work. He needed to answer the question of what agents and sellers really wanted.

“We kind of scrapped everything and started over keeping the pieces that worked and the core components that we know work, then worked through the rest of the process from scratch with Rev1,” Sauerzopf says. 

SocialMLS was able to leverage several months of data from their original launch to guide the second iteration. For example, in the first version 10 seller posts would go out over a 30-day period. Data showed that activity severely dropped off after the first four posts, and most of the activity happened in the first two weeks, thereby establishing the new timeframe.

Since Sauerzopf was already active in the industry in the real estate title business before developing the app, he had a wide network of contacts to interface with on prototypes.

Sauerzopf praises Rev1 for the guidance they were able to provide, saying so much was available and offered to him in the form of support or expertise – and at little to no cost.

“I’ve gotten so much out of that experience,” he says. 

Now launched with a revamped direction, SocialMLS is aiming for rapid growth.

“We built this to be a national product that anyone anywhere can use it,” Sauerzopf says. 

For more information, visit socialmls.com.