For most consumers, a home represents the biggest purchase they will ever make. It also is one of the most complex purchase decisions, filled with countless choices at every turn.
For real estate agents and mortgage lenders, different challenges lie in wait: finding prospects, navigating them through their options, closing the deal, then finding yet more prospects to start the whole process over.
"The biggest challenge for all Realtors is to develop leads," said Grace Koenig, agent with Kentucky-based Semonin Realtors. "Every time you close a sale, you're out of work."
Valencia, Calif.-based Reosk has a plan to help both sides of the home-buying transaction: place interactive kiosks in shopping malls that dispense information on available properties while allowing real estate agents to meet new prospects.
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Featured properties, premium shopping space
Jon Raich, president of Reosk, founded the company in late 2005. He said his company currently has 15 interactive real estate sales centers in malls in California and will be moving into Texas and Florida in 2007.
Each Reosk is built around a large, backlit display featuring 48 to 96 properties. Two 19-inch touchscreens allow shoppers to view full-length slide shows of any of the properties. Clients use a Web-based interface to upload information and manage their featured properties, and receive weekly reports on how many times each slide show was viewed. WebRaiser Technologies designed the software application.
Nearby, two booth-like areas are equipped for face-to-face meetings; two networked workstations allow agents and lenders to pre-qualify clients and research MLS data.
Agents pay a monthly fee to have their properties listed on the backlit display; they also can purchase "booth time" during mall hours when they can staff the area and talk to prospects one-on-one. The shared nature of booth time makes it possible for agents to afford mall space — which often is prohibitively expensive for individual agents and smaller agencies. (Clients also can pay a higher monthly fee to get exclusivity for a Reosk unit.)
Raich said the price to become a Reosk client ranges from $2,000 to $5,000 per month, depending on the amount of time and number of services purchased. The company also will sell the units outright, with prices varying from $7,000 to $25,000, but in this case would charge a monthly software fee of $1,500.
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| A Reosk unit at Sacramento's Westfield Downtown Plaza. |
Currently, the Reosk system hosts more than 600 agents, brokers and lenders. Raich said 60 percent of clients generate at least one transaction within the first 90 days; the average Reosk location generates 8 transactions per month.
"That's 96 transactions per year, at a $10,000 average commission," he said. "That's not bad."
Pays for itself
In 2005, California mortgage banker Metrocities closed more than $10 billion in loans. For loan officer Mitch Milat, Reosk facilitated much of his share of that amount.
"I wish we had this two years ago when the market was a bit stronger," he said. "But when that kind of market comes back, it's going to be awesome. I'm glad we've got our foot in it now."
Milat said his company pays about $3,000 per month for access to leads generated by Reosk. Within the first year, he harvested 80 leads — and estimates he closed somewhere between 20 and 30 of them.
"Those are solid leads," he said. "It has more than paid for itself."
Koenig said she is intrigued by the idea, and would likely explore it if it became available in her area.
"People contact Realtors on the Internet all the time — but with this, you don't need a computer," she said. "It's definitely an interesting marketing tool. I think it has potential."
