The role and value of real estate agents has come under scrutiny since the National Association of Realtors (NAR) settled a bevy of antitrust lawsuits related to offers of agent compensation on Realtor-owned multiple listing services (MLSs).
While it’s unclear exactly how home buyers and sellers are reacting to the situation, a startup tech company called Rayse is “pushing back on the settlement” with a new communication platform that allows prospective buyers to track what their agents are doing in real time.
Rayse believes that its platform injects much-needed transparency between buyers and their agents so that agents can better convey the specific tasks they’re working on and what their value is to the client.
“There’s a big disconnect in understanding what the agents are actually doing because finding the home online is actually only about 5% of it,” Ashley Terrell-Kayiran, chief revenue office for Rayse, said in a statement. “Much of the work the agent does is in the contract and closing stage, like going through disclosure and inspections. What we want to do is be able to bring to light everything the agents are actually doing.”
Research from WAV Group suggests that Rayse has its work cut out. In a survey, 46% of homebuyers think their agents spend less than 15 hours working on their behalf. But Rayse claims that buyer agents spend roughly 87 hours on a single transaction.
The app has three components that Rayse believes will help to boost transparency. First, it helps agents pitch buyers on their services by providing data, compensation expectations and buyer agreements. The second involves the home shopping process, as the platform keeps track of properties the buyer has toured by integrating MLS data. The third component is closing reports that show everything the agent did for the buyer.
The company decided to initially roll out the communication platform to buyer agents since the new rules mandated by the NAR settlement primarily affect them, so buyer agents have more of a need to communicate their value to clients than listings agents do. But Rayse also plans integration for seller agents sometime in 2025.
The product offers white-label branding that allows buyer agents and brokerages to customize the interface for their clients. White-label branding can also be used for brokerages when trying to recruit new agents.
Rayse has rolled out this product to more than 200 brokerages, including NextHome. The company also has a partnership with California Regional MLS, the largest MLS in the country. Rayse’s co-founders are NextHome CEO James Dwiggins, Christian Dwiggins and Christine Jacobson, who recently joined Realtor.com.
Terrell-Kayiran said that Rayse will first prioritize onboarding for its investors, which include NextHome, Howard Hanna Real Estate, a few Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices franchises, RE/MAX, WAV Group, Tom Ferry and a number of MLSs.
