Show HN: 77 Year old launches SaaS platform today. Seeks feedback (propbox.co)
Richard Montgomery (rm@propbox.co). I believe PropBox is the first advertising platform to facilitate a home seller and buyer to directly negotiate and close real estate transactions within the platform and zero commissions entirely online. Looking for feedback to continuously improve the product.
278 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 68.5 ms ] threadCan you provide some info about the tech stack? Did you wrote the code or you hired someone?
https://dearmonty.com/
It seems they do have quite some experience in real estate
Hm, seems inaccessible for me.
https://imgur.com/a/0NkPqiE
You may want to limit the absolute size of the top banner/image so it doesn't go past the width of the text area
The house appears to be centered in the picture, more or less.
However, since there’s another house right very close to it on the right side and empty space on the left, I believe this creates a little bit of an illusion of the house not being centered.
Personally, I think it looks fine.
Side note: If I was buying a house that nice I’d want a bit more space between my neighbor. :)
There is no link
Also curious what got you interested in building this specific product?
Either way seems like a great start
[1] https://marc.io/ask-for-feedback
If your company is in Wisconsin, how come it references the Department of Consumer Affairs in California?
Governing Law section has some blanks not filled in.
If you copy/pasted a template from somewhere else it might be worth having a lawyer do a quick review to make sure it meets your needs.
Would also be nice if the hyperlinks on that page worked.
The platform is currently operating in 13 states and California is one of them.
Good find on the blanks
No templates at least two lawyers have reviewed
We are working on the links
As an aside, your terms pages both don't allow selecting text, which feels odd and is quite annoying. (I frequently select text as I'm reading it to help keep my place. It's also just annoying when pages block selecting text in the first place.)
You also can't print either of them beyond the first page due to how the pages are structured.
Apart from the legal pages, you filters on home type are currently too broad, IMO. (In particular multi-family homes should be a category -- I personally would be hard-pressed to consider a duplex as it's important to my that I don't share walls with people.) If you're modeling off of Zillow's tools, make sure to note that Zillow's filters change quite a bit when you indicate you're looking to buy rather than rent. (In rental view it doesn't disambiguate house vs duplex but in buy view it does.)
In general the filters are lacking (lot size is another big one) but I imagine that can wait.
A proper gallery view of all the images of the house that I can scroll through would be important to me. Clicking through images one by one is quite annoying.
Rambling aside, best of luck with PropBox! Seems like a tough business to get going but I've always though something like this should exist.
Consider getting a virtual office (e.g. regus) for mail. You don't wnat random people rocking up at your door, and you don't want to have to change every address if you ever move.
Should be ‘even more’ I think :) nice site!
> These Legal Terms and your use of the Services are governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of ________ applicable to agreements made and to be entirely performed within the State of _______ without regard to its conflict of law principles.
Also, not sure why you are loading your ToS in an iframe and making it non-selectable and non-copyable? Seems rather user-hostile.
(in other words, this isn't really re-treading new ground, which is probably a good thing... there are tons of other sites that focus on actually closing a sale with very little commissions involved.)
Also, as a 36 year old developer, this product and you yourself, are inspirational. This sort of thing certainly lifts my spirits as I begin the job hunt after a sabbatical.
Thought I'd mention as well-- I heard about this Japanese developer who made an iphone app at age 84 and even met Tim Cook. [1]
[1] "Meet the 84-year-old Japanese app developer who inspired Tim Cook" November 23, 2019. Nikkei Asia. https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Meet-the-84-year...
Ironically, most states have standardized real estate forms, so really it's just Realtors® that are clogging up the works and demanding 6% commissions. (Actually, it's just NAR; most realtor agencies get 3%, for working their half of the sale, and then the actual realtor only gets half of that, or 1.5%. All of the rest goes to the middlemen, because historically buying and selling homes was highly labor intensive.)
https://wave.webaim.org/report#/https://propbox.co/
Bunch of front-end security issues. Some of these are trivial, but also... if you are going to do something, why not do it right?
https://securityheaders.com/?q=https%3A%2F%2Fpropbox.co%2F&f...
The Privacy page is a nightmare, as others have pointed out. Why do this? Won't work with screen readers, won't let users copy text... it's bad.
https://propbox.co/privacy
None of the social links in the footer work.
Missing meta description and social medial share tile meta tags.
https://socialsharepreview.com/?url=https://propbox.co/
https://propbox.co/robots.txt gives 404
https://propbox.co/sitemap.xml gives 404
Bunch of trivial stuff that sort of says, "My web dev is a little junior."
But cool concept!
Happy to send you some suggestions!
1. Why did you choose to put the fees on the seller side? You say its 0 commission, but really its a flat fee commission on the seller. This is fine, just curious why not split? Makes it an unpleasant surprise for the seller.
2. It would be good if you be more upfront on where your service is active. Maybe during signup. I made an account just to find out you can't serve me. Double whammy
3. Its not really clear what sellers get from the platform besides flat fee commission
Overall cool site. I'm always for innovation in real estate space. My experience home buying was super annoying.
No, it's nothing like a commission. It's a fee due whether the house sells or not.
Basically FSBO sellers decide where,and how much, to spend their marketing dollars. Of course related-party transactions have no marketing costs at all, but the rest figure they can market themselves for less than the commission.
This $1000 is really just an ad placement.
Not hating on this (and give huge props to actually releasing something), but why spend $995 when it costs only $100-500 for a flat-fee MLS listing?
With a flat-fee MLS service you get the added benefit that all realtors will see your listing because it’s on the official MLS?
Your app looks great, and I truly wish you the best of luck! I'd love to see someone succeed doing this...
Some you have to pay for their data, some you can do for free, some want to pay for better listings.
On a different note, without an agency one can leverage the lack of artificial urgency. ATM, with few listings, the longer listings last the better it is for you.
I sort of disagree with the analysis about having things sit longer. One of the issues is that if it sits too long, because markets are hot, sellers will just go with an agent and never use your platform again. Additionally, many buyers will assume that the data is stale because its old. It's really a difficult situation with so many non-obvious layers of complexity in how it works.
Firstly for most people buying and selling a house it is the biggest transaction that they ever do, and they are simply not used to negotiating that large of a contract. They actually need a Real Estate agent to help drive the transaction to a close. So in our model we had a licensed agent as the founder and he spent considerable time negotiating deals to close, and sold a lot of homes.
Secondly when it comes to selling your home you want to advertise it to the biggest market possible, which in our terms meant being on the major real estate platforms, one of which required you to be a licensed agent. Your buyers are not really incentivised to find your site and will use the big sites.
Thirdly, and most importantly, the Real Estate game as you probably know is all about finding listings. That takes money and time, and $1000 per listing simply doesn’t make economic sense, well it didn’t for us.
Our business failed, gracefully
Suggestions (without reviewing the site):
Sell packs of home sale supplies such as yard signs, advertisements on platforms where you get discounts or access.
Try to get relationships with large sellers, in particular we found sellers of new apartment complexes /multifamily dwellings which were in demand were very keen on lowering their transaction fees.
Consider offering a Real Estate agent service for very low cost will you conduct all of your business on the phone and not in person. That may meet the regulations and dramatically undercut the market.
Consider a higher price, especially consider a transaction fee as that’s where sellers don’t mind paying.
The Real Estate industry, and our part of the world and I suspect and yours, had a wide array of inefficient practices that were begging for automation. That’s where the real value has been created, though I would say the real money is of course in selling houses.
Good luck with the endeavour.
I bought my last house through that.
First time buyers may need some help, but you learn a lot and quickly
Sellers Pricing: https://homie.com/pricing#buy-sell-tabs-first
Buyers Pricing: https://homie.com/pricing#buy-sell-tabs-second
The higher fee means they can actually pay for all the costs they incur and still remain profitable. Including the buyer agent fee means that they're in a position to attract non-Homie buyer agents to the platform, so they're not trying to bootstrap a market from scratch. It also means they can give half of that portion of the fee back to the buyer as an incentive to choose Homie, whereas in OP's model there's no reason for buyers to choose them.
Seems such a con. And your links imply it's built in to the system, there's always a 6% charge for that (otherwise why would they charge and give back half).
Short of multi-millionaires looking for an interesting fifth home without caring where it is, I don't see why you'd want to try to explain your requirements to someone else, have them sort of get it, show you things that aren't right for reasons you forgot to give or can't quite explain, and pay for the privilege.
In the UK we just find somewhere we like the look of, arrange viewing with the (sellers') estate agent, and potentially make an offer. What would a buyer's agent do for me except increase the price/decrease what I can afford?
(And I'm sure you could find someone to do that here if you wanted, especially for very high value properties, or by bespoke arrangement with some other real estate agent or salesman who's used to negotiating, but it's just not commonly done. I suppose for one thing you often end up paying more than the list price - and they might have to negotiate hard to get it for that, other times not at all. You'd need to somehow incentivise listing at a 'real' asking price (or penalise difference from it) I suppose.)
But the house-finding (and related apparent refusal to arrange viewing except through buying agent sometimes) and inversely aligned incentives seem strange to me.
Doing it a second time in a saner market, I would be more inclined to do it ourselves and negotiate a 3% discount on the house. But successfully buying a house at rock bottom interest rates was totally worth the cost.
But you don't have to hire them for that even if the seller is using them
It's $1 for the first 100 people who sell a home on the platform, then full price after that.
And actually, probably need to make it $1/home for the first 1000 or so just to get the site to critical mass. Not going to get many buyers for 2 listings...
That's the most apples & oranges thing I've read in a long time
I recently used a real listing agent that I paid a flat fee of $500 to and they got the listing on the MLS given I filled out the forms and provided pictures (hired a photographer for $200). I was fine just having the MLS as the marketing vehicle as buyer's would find it without any marketing at all. It worked and saved 6%-$700 which on this particular property was about $35,000. (Oh I did do my own negotiating as a seller, but they offered to do that for an added flat $ fee that I don't remember)
I think that's the model for this. Don't try to create a FSBO market, try to find a RE agent that does above in every market and create a network of that type of service. Then you can skim a fee off at some point from either the agent, seller, buyer, or anyone else.
Buyers these days do a lot of their own searching. If a buyer finds the listing on Zillow via MLS, it won't stop them from viewing the house even if they have an agent.
Once they view the house, the owner could convince them to ditch the agent. I mean honestly, what does the average agent do for a client? Not very much.
If I was working with an agent, I’m sure they’d discourage me from that listing, but as a seller in a reasonable market, I’m willing to give up a few possible buyers to save 5-6% on a 7-figure transaction. (I’ve also seen FSBOs that offer X% to buyer agents.)
I will say that agents did do some work to make the transaction complete on both of my house purchases. Negotiations after the inspection can be tense and a good agent can help both sides get to the closing table.
This is exactly my experience. In shopping for my first house, I had a clear idea of what I wanted and a budget that matched that and the first four agents I worked with were nearly useless. (This was before web-MLS was a thing.) The fifth was a breath of fresh air and I would happily use them again.
Most Buyer Agency agreements operate on the basis of "if we show a house to you, and you buy it, we are owed a commission regardless of if you terminate the agreement afterwards". Now, typically a real estate agent isn't about to sue their clients if they purchase FSBO, since that would mean suing them for a 2.5 or 3% commission the seller wasn't even offering to the buyer agent, but it does mean that you can't get agent 1 to show a house, then switch to another agent, without agent 1 getting paid.
Do buyer agent agreements require you buy a house through them even if you find the house and view the house and negotiate the price with the seller yourself?
(I’ve never relied on an agent for these things, I did everything myself when buying my first/only house)
>PropBox is not a real estate company. It is a technically advanced media/advertising company that is specializing in advertising homes. The seller purchases an ad for a dedicated web page that benefits the seller and the buyer.
1) What PropBox is in simple terms the customer would use.
2) How it works (from the customer perspective).
If I go to your website today and see no homes, I'm probably not coming back even if you add 1000 in my area tomorrow. How would I even know?
Using existing data and listings as an aggregate with a special built in marketplace IMHO would provide more value to all parties.
Just to inquire, do you mean Realtor® or just a salesperson/agent? Any salesperson/agent can get their license by taking a short training course, and can then subscribe to lead websites like Zillow etc. But becoming a Realtor is at least a bit more commitment to knowing how real estate actually works and advising your client on good decisions, in addition to being bound by the Realtor code of ethics. https://www.nar.realtor/about-nar/when-is-a-real-estate-agen...
Disclaimer: I worked for a real estate brokerage (as a software developer) for about 8 years, did a real estate based startup in the mid 2000s, and have transacted using real estate agents as well. It has been years since I was deep in the real estate business, but it does leave scars.
It is possible that PropBox displaces real estate agents. From what I've seen, there are plenty of crappy agents. Good riddance, get rid of them.
Good agents don't just open doors, they:
* know the local market and help you price a property correctly. Say it with me, 'real estate is not fungible'.
* are known in the market and can help find buyers (when it's a buyer's market and sellers are struggling)
* can connect you with trusted people who can help you assess and market the property, including inspectors, engineers, stagers, landscapers, etc
* understand how to get a transaction (with all the moving pieces) done. Especially in a difficult market, this can be the difference between selling a home or not, or getting a good price or not, or selling it in a reasonable timeframe or not.
Is that worth $35k (or 3% of <home price>)? Depends on what your time is worth and their incremental value, esp in terms of pricing and marketing. What is selling a house one week faster worth? It depends on your situation, stress level, etc. As others in other threads have mentioned, there are definitely other paths if you want to do more work yourself.
What drives me nuts about the $35k or other high figure mentioned by people when talking about real estate agents for "just opening doors". No one ever mentions the meetings with people who will never buy, the people you've been providing real estate advice for 5 years, or the lookie-loos who see 50 properties to and then decide "the time isn't right". This is opportunity cost that the real estate agent eats regularly. I don't know if 3% commission is the right number (I suspect it is high, based on how other countries do real estate buying) but that time isn't free.
I've also known that several real estate brokerages have tried to do things similar to the NAEBA (Redfin started out with realtors on salary) but that led to a lemons problem since great realtors who could help with the above migrated to brokerages where they could make more money.
Brokers have existed for high value, relatively rare transactions for many years because the stakes are high. I found this book very illuminating on the value of middleman like real estate agents: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-137-53020-2
It is simply not possible that PropBox displaces the MLS until there is a critical mass of listings on the site. Zillow took years and years to get there (maybe a decade) and they had the benefit of all the public sector data and a sexy Zestimate. I'm not sure that PropBox has that kind of pull.
And it's actually *MLSes*. They each are pretty peculiar fiefdoms that many people have tried to storm, only to be co-opted, because they control the listing data, and the access to the listing data is really the only thing that matters. (Well, maybe access to mortgages too.)
Anyway, there's tons of money flowing through real estate, so maybe I'm totally wrong and you'll revolutionize it and make a fortune. Good luck!
Is there any way to get that time from 10-12 hours down to say 0-1 hour... while still maintaining the bulk of the savings?
If so, that might be a good value add.
https://www.forsalebyowner.com.au/
I was guilty of it too as one of the tech leads when the company I was working for was working to get acquired.
At the end of the day we just couldn't get enough customers. That is despite spending some serious bucks on advertising with Facebook and others.
I suspect you are right - home purchase/sale is too complicated for a regular consumer from a legal and practical standpoint and cost of failure is high. It's better to hand it off to a professional.
Homeshake [0] is a local company that does something similar to this, which at least appears to be having success.
[0] https://www.homeshake.com
Something I found: In the FAQ, under “Caution” there is an orphan “A LINK” text.
But I can tell it must be a very tough business. For one they have run continuous TV ads for years. The ads are targeting sellers only almost, and the main message is to save on realtor fees. So I'd suspect it's the listings that are the challenge, in a seller's market, the buyers will come.
Their offers/pricing for sellers is very thorough. Yard signs of course, but also pro photographers sessions, 3d virtual visit thingy (check it out its neat), full legal services to complete the transaction... Their online listings and overall experience is much better than MLS/Realtor websites.
In the end the platform was bought by PurpleBrick which is a slightly different business model I believe, and PurpleBrick was bought by a large credit union that might simply advertise mortgages? They never attempted to expand much outside of the quebec market afaik, but the platform looks like it's here to stay and going strong here.
[1] https://duproprio.com/en/
The duration of the "legal warranty" is related to the price and the usual life expectancy of an appliance. (7 yrs for a std washing machine).
It's also illegal to make a loan with too high interest rate (above 30%).