Amazon Partners With Realogy To Match Online Shoppers With Brokers
On Amazon, you can buy a seemingly endless list of products. Now, the company wants to help you buy a home as well.
Residential brokerage conglomerate Realogy Holdings has struck a deal with Amazon to list its brokers on the e-commerce giant's website, The Wall Street Journal reports. Amazon will also give users a slew of benefits when they purchase a home with a broker through the service, which will be called TurnKey.
Realogy brands like Coldwell Banker, Sotheby's International and Century 21 will be integrated into the service, accounting for about 3,000 brokers, WSJ reports. The value of benefits Amazon will give to TurnKey users will range from $1K to $5K, depending on the sale price of the home.
To qualify for the maximum benefit, a home would need to cost at least $700K, while homes sold for $399K or less will qualify for the minimum $1K benefit, WSJ reports. The benefits Amazon will offer range from smart home products like its Echo devices and Ring doorbells to move-in and home maintenance assistance through Amazon Home Services.
TurnKey will launch in 15 markets, including Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver and Washington, D.C., but not including New York, according to WSJ.
The sweeteners are meant to address the trend of home shoppers looking for properties themselves, which has been among the biggest drag on profits for brokerage houses, according to WSJ. Agents now list properties themselves on sites like Zillow for interested buyers, cutting their parent companies out of potential commissions.
Realogy has seen a precipitous decline in value in the years since Zillow and its ilk began taking over the market, falling from a $7B market capitalization in 2013 to around $600M in mid-2019, the WSJ reports. In the past year alone, Realogy's stock has dropped 80%.
Realogy's stock jumped 25% in value after it announced its deal with Amazon, CNBC reports. Though Amazon is not listing homes on its own site just yet, any inroad it makes into the world of real estate is enough for everyone to sit up and take notice.
