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Movoto's Big Brother Business Model Bites

By The Somers Team

Real Estate Agent with The Somers Team at KW Philadelphia

September 03, 2011 02:18 AM

Movotos Big Brother Business Model Bites

Note to Movoto: Investor wants to buy bank properties, has no cash, wants to do seller financing with banks

Note to Movoto: Prospect looking to rent properties that are marketed for sale

Note to Movoto: Buyer wanted to see properties this weekend, but already working with another agent.

Note to Movoto: Buyer not qualified to purchase a property. Looking to do lease purchase.

Personally, I do a lot of business as does my team. When I get approached by any lead generating service that is pay-per-month I politely decline stating that we are top producers as we generate a lot of leads through referrals and our website and blog. However, if they did have buyers or sellers needing our services, I am always happy to pay a referral fee. So when Movoto contacted me indicating that they were on a referral system, I agreed to begin working with them. To be honest, I do not recall what the referral fee was - I believe it was 25 percent. I did not close any deals with them so the referral fee did not come up.

So what is Movoto ?

"Movoto is a full service real estate brokerage that provides you with the most advanced search tools to find homes for sale listed in the MLS. Movoto has a network of top-rated local real estate agents who are the most active and experienced Realtors, performing at the top 2-5% of their field. These Movoto Certified Real Estate Agents can help you buy or sell a home with ease. When you view a home for sale on Movoto, you can also see detailed school information, neighborhood demographic data, comparable homes, and housing market statistics."

Movoto states that you are a preferred agent in your City but I come to find out that many agents in Philadelphia are receiving leads. I specify my areas in the beginning that I focus in, but the leads that were sent were for folks all over the City of Philadelphia. I figured it was better than nothing, so we worked the leads. Without going into too much detail, the leads were awful. Many leads were for buyers looking for move-in condition properties under $50,000 in great areas that simply did not exist, or lower end rental leads. Many of the leads were not qualified to get a mortgage once they called a mortgage person. Or beginning investors looking up properties that were already sold.

I am okay with all of the above as it is a numbers game. However, the worst part of the process is the big brother mentality of the site. Once a lead is assigned, the Movoto folks will email and call you incessantly not long after the lead is sent out to make sure the lead is contacted. You need to update their site with notes. It is like Big Brother watching and looking over you. I understand that they want to monitor the leads, but it is also too much. I am extremely busy and being a top producer and I do not need to get a phone call asking "Did you call Mr Jones. He wants to see 123 Main St today at 3:00".

Even though I was aggravated with being "harassed" by big brother, I figured heck, maybe one of these crappy leads will be a real buyer at some point. But mysteriously, the leads just stopped out of the blue. No loss I figured as the time following up with these leads, combined with updating the Movoto site or fielding the Movoto calls was just a time suck and simply a pain the ass. I finally did receive a phone call and I asked why the leads stopped. I was told a deal was not closed. I told them my experience. And more importantly I also saw that other agents passed on leads meaning you have the opportunity to say you are out of town or are unavailable to service a prospect and then that lead will go to the next person. You can see it in the chain. Frankly, I saw many agents basically "cherry picking" these leads which looking back is what I should have done. If you choose to get hooked up with Movoto, I would recommend doing that. I thought Movoto would be happy that the leads would be serviced and communicated with. So be it.

At the end of the day, it is just another example of a company taking our data, aggregating it, generating "leads" and selling them back to us. I laugh when a lead comes in on our own listing. Thus, this might not be bad for a newer agent who is in the need for leads, but for more established agents, I would suggest to pass or if you do sign-up, cherry-pick the leads and conveniently be on vacation for the lower priced properties or investors looking to do seller financing on bank owned properties.

And if you are a consumer, why not just search on Trulia on Zillow ? Or a brokerage site such as REMAX.com ? Or if you are in Philly, use a hyper-local site such as TheSomersTeam.com? You can go to an agent directly, ask for a referral from your friends instead of having one "assigned" to you from a website on the other end of the United States that is going to collect a referral fee. Besides, you will probably get more service from an agent that is collecting 100 percent of the buyers agent commission instead of paying a referral fee to the Movoto site that frankly, did nothing to represent you with the purchase of your home.

What is your experience with Movoto?

Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

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Jane Peters

Home Jane Realty - Los Angeles, CA

Los Angeles real estate concierge services

I give you credit for going for this kind of referral service in the beginning. I can't imagine that many of them are providing qualityh leads, but you won't know if you don't try.

Sep 03, 2011 09:18 AM

The Somers Team

The Somers Team at KW Philadelphia - Philadelphia, PA

Delivering Real Estate Happiness

Jane - Exactly. You never know until you try. Like I said, everything is a numbers game. What was most annoying was the harassment of the folks at Movoto in regards to follow-up. Of course we follow-up. That is what we do. Then after all that, they stop sending the leads. The irony is we were probably the only ones accepting the low end leads instead of cherry picking. Either way, it is all good. I am just glad Trulia and Zillow do not sell back leads but of course there models are different and work well if you want to be a featured agent in a zipcode or have your listings be enhanced, etc...

Sep 03, 2011 11:04 AM

Gita Bantwal

RE/MAX Centre Realtors - Warwick, PA

REALTOR,ABR,CRS,SRES,GRI - Bucks County & Philadel

Christopher and Stephanie, Thank you for the post explaining how it works. I have not yet paid for leads . I get leads from Re/Max and from my web site.

Sep 05, 2011 11:11 PM

Dena Smith

DSmith Realtors - Irving, TX

My experience with Movoto was similar.... I worked very hard at following up and attempting to work their leads which were primarily people who clearly did not want to be contacted by an agent and more often than not spoke languages that I did not speak.

I felt that cutting off my leads because of my alleged non-performance seemed short sighted and tacky on their part. Is anyone actually able to close these leads? My biggest beef with them was that the alleged policy that cuts off the leads along with any of their other ‘policies’ are NEVER DISCLOSED ANYWHERE. What kind of company just makes up the rules as they go along and NEVER DISCLOSES THEM? Oh wait – that would be Movoto.

Don’t waste your time with this company – good agents will be frustrated beyond belief with this company.

Jul 15, 2012 09:24 AM

Anonymous

Another Agent........

I had the same experience. I am a Broker and very busy and thought I would try it out since it was free to receive the leads. I had more calls in 4 weeks from people with English as a Second language then I have had all year. I was also bombed with crappy leads for unqualified buyers. I finally got cut off for non performance and have not contacted them since. Suprisingly, one of the leads, cash buyer, is still talking to me and has been making offers on houes for $300K. If he buys one it will be great, but not sure it was worth the frustration.

Jan 28, 2013 05:15 PM

Anonymous

Marksmade

I have been partnered with Movoto for four months and I will concur that Movoto will be a waste of agent time and energies for most. Beware they recycle leads and hand them off to unsuspecting partner agents. Fortunately, I have closed one deal and submitted multiple offers from different clients referred from Movoto and have always kept them up-to-date with progress reports. Unfortunately, the leads stopped coming! Ninety seven percent of my leads are for $50,000 or less and a large part of those are recycled but I have always work every lead completely. If you have thick skin and don't mind a lack of transparency or communication from a referral service then Movoto will work for you.

Please if you have other options put your resources there only use this service as a last resort.They'll keep you blind and never disclose their policies on how customers are assigned, send you recycled leads, then act like bitches and cut you off without explanation if you do anything other than jump high and fast.

Its a business model with potential if it were ran with more openess and customer screening and treated their bread-n-butter (partner agents) like stake holders. Their lack of services are not on par for the 30% referral fee that they require.

I am tempered by some of the wonderful customers that I call clients and I am thankful for that.

Feb 21, 2013 08:30 PM

Anonymous

Marksmade

The preceeding comments were submitted 02/22/2013

Feb 21, 2013 08:31 PM

Robert Rodriguez

iMarketYourHome.com - Los Angeles, CA

Hi Chris. Sorry to hear about your bad experience with Movoto. I am new to the program. They have so far given me leads in my prefered areas, which is West LA. I'm very efficient at being able to handle online buyer leads, I feel the key is having a system in place for the follow up and pre-qualification process, so it's not a time suck. For example, me and my assistant spend about 2 hours in the morning doing follow up with all of the buyers wether its sending a reminder email, scheduling appointment or touching base to stay in their mind share of realtors. Some online leads are not ready to transact right away, and you have to be able to properly scrub them before labeling them "not serious". The CRM and system we have in place works for us and is part of the reason we are efficeint at closing online referrals. I'm still in communication with leads I purchased last year through Trulia and am now showing homes to leads that contacted me 6 months ago. The key is staying in touch.

With Movoto, they want you to close 10% of the leads they send, which in my opinion is very doable. 7 years ago conversion with internet leads was much lower, but according the most recent NAR survey - 90% of buyers used the internet as their primary tool to search for homes.

The only reason I joined Movoto, is because I recently joined Redfin at the end of last year. Through Redfin, I was able to secure 3 escrows, in 3 months - not bad! I also went on 2 listing appointments. So from my experience, todays buyers and sellers are online checking their home value, searching for homes, and doing their research before reaching out to an agent. The key is being able to convert, because the leads are there.

Apr 02, 2013 03:05 AM

Dena Smith

DSmith Realtors - Irving, TX

Eventually Movoto will run out of agents they can con into joinging the service then cut off without explanation.

I am baffled as to how these guys actually stay in business.

Apr 07, 2013 11:36 PM

Michael J. O'Connor

Diamond Ridge Realty - Corona, CA

Eastvale - 951-847-4883

I was contacted by Movoto last week and received their referral agreement. It seems simple enough. They also had a training course - orientation for new agents entering their network. They've made it pretty clear that the DO have performance standards and that they will re-assign leads, sometimes even after they've been working with a client.

The stated performance goals are: talk to at least 1 of each 2 leads, meet in person with at least 1 of 10 leads, write an offer with at least 1 of 20 leads and enter into contract with at least 1 of 33 leads.

Failing to meet these minimum standards will likely lead to suspension in the program.

I was previously a RedFin partner agent and had some fair results which is why I was 'open' to working with Movoto. They ask that you grab a lead within 5 minutes of initial contact from Movoto and to make contact - AND UPDATE THEIR SYSTEM - within 4 hours. If you don't update the system within the four hours, it will ding your record with them.

So I think they're probably doing better now at telling agents how it works. The key (as Robert #8 points out) is cultivation of the leads so that you do eventually get turn into clients. I didn't see anything in their system that was tailor-made to address that issue - and they even seemed to indicate it is up to the referral agent to figure that part out on their own.

Apr 29, 2013 07:25 AM

Anonymous

rob

I was a Movoto referral agent for 1.5 -2 years. I explained to them that in my state it is illegal to disclose confidential information about a client to anyone, without consent. This means all of the follow up info they want is illegal. They are not a party to the transaction and are entitled to zero information. In addition, the Movoto agreement says you may not disclose your relationship with Movoto (or words to that effect), to the consumer. Good luck getting the client consent to tell some company in California all their business. Referral companies have for years required illegal disclosure and submission of client info to them as a basis for being a referral agent. Hopefully they will one day be prosecuted as well as agents who violate state laws regarding this.
I did close a few transactions after I was terminated for low performance, and I paid their 30% referral fee on each settlement. Most leads were crappy and unqualified, and with incessant harassment of text & email update requests, I concluded the time expenditure was not worth the monetary result.
One note - they put my picture & info on a special website so that if you searched for my name on google, you would click on their website set up with my name and then they tried to refer people to me that clicked on my name and ended up on their site where they advertised my name. Imagine that they set up a site advertising YOUR NAME to lure people who were already looking for you!! Then they could refer them back to you for a 30% referral fee. How insane & greedy can you get?!?
If you are going to accept referrals - YOU are the one who needs to set the terms.
Good success.

Dec 20, 2014 01:18 AM

#11

Anonymous

rob

One more thing - your agreement with Movoto says you will pay them if you close the client within 2 YEARS.

Dec 20, 2014 01:26 AM

#12

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