If you’re a real estate buyer, seller, agent or investor, chances are you’re already familiar with Nobul; the buzzy real estate digital marketplace that crashed onto the scene in 2017.
The company has enjoyed features in newspapers and trade magazines touting its rapid-fire achievements. It has been the subject of TV news broadcasts and radio shows, eager to parse out its appeal to a new generation of real estate consumers, and it topped Deloitte’s 2022 Technology Fast 50 Award as the fastest-growing tech company. And, as if to put a feather in its cap, the company recently announced that it surpassed $7 billion in sales.
What Is Nobul?
Nobul has enjoyed a whirlwind half-decade, but some readers might still be unfamiliar – especially those who’ve been out of the market for a while. For the uninitiated, Nobul rose to prominence on a mission to hand control back to real estate consumers. The end-to-end platform serves as a marketplace for finding agents, an information hub for consumer-centric resources, a curatorial listings engine and a communication platform – all rolled into one.
As Nobul CEO Regan McGee tells Superb Crew, “Shopping for the right home is not one-size-fits-all, it is personal, and we aim to facilitate homebuyers’ ability to choose the agent best suited to their needs, and support them end-to-end throughout their real estate journey.”
How exactly does Nobul do it? In this article, let’s explore how the rapidly rising company is helping to personalize the homebuying (and selling) process.
A Marketplace Approach to Finding Agents
It’s fair to say that Nobul’s major achievement, at least in its first few years, was its approach to connecting home buyers and sellers with experts.
Traditionally, the agents were in charge. They used lead generation software and aggressive marketing tactics to engage consumers, often at the expense of consumer choice. And it wasn’t uncommon for agents to hide their commission rates, obfuscate online reviews and conceal their transaction histories.
Nobul flipped that dynamic on its head. The company enables buyers and sellers “to openly see the transaction histories, pricing, reviews and services of real estate agents.” And once a consumer whittles their choices to a shortlist, “agents can then actively compete for the prospective buyers’ business.”
Curated Listings
Early on, Nobul made it clear that it had ambitions beyond matching agents with consumers – it wanted to personalize the transaction process from one end to the other.
Using an algorithmic approach, the company introduced curated listings. Consumers can fiddle with a slew of sophisticated filters to enter their “dream home” criteria, at which point the platform will create a relevant list of properties. You can book tours through the platform, view the listing price history of properties, and access price trend insights for the area.
With these consumer-centric tools, buyers can interactively assess homes with their chosen agent, all from the convenience of a central hub.
This article can only scratch the surface of what Nobul is trying to do. Dig a little deeper on the platform, and you’ll also find consumer resources like homebuyer’s guides, market conditions indicators, affordability calculators, mortgage rate comparison toolkits and home valuations. Viewed holistically, it’s easy to see how Nobul is personalizing house hunting and real estate transactions by handing access, choice and information back to the consumer.