Exclusive: JP & Associates to Launch Instant Offer Platform for JPAR Agents

April 24, 2019 | Candy Evans | | Broker News

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North Texas-based JP&Associates is entering the iBuyer market on behalf of its agents, launching an instant offer platform across the exploding firm’s brokerage and franchise network this week.

This makes JPAR, a full-service brokerage with a capped transaction fee, the first independent brokerage in North Texas to launch an exclusive iBuyer program for its agents. It’s called JPAR Instant Offers.

“Entering the iBuyer market gives our agents a competitive advantage over Opendoor, Knock, OfferPad, and the other unilateral “sell now” offers,” says Giuseppe J.P. Piccinini, President and Chairman of the Board of JP & Associates Realtors. “This will greatly benefit our clients and agents.”

J.P. says he has partnered with a Seattle-based company, OfferAI. which relocated to Dallas in January.

“OfferAI is a white-label iBuyer that uses a bot to make instant offers on off-market properties. It empowers agents to present themselves as an iBuyer from their brokerage site, or their own affiliate page of OfferAI,” says Jack Burns, Founder and CEO of OfferAI.

Unlike most of the current iBuyers on the landscape, JPAR associates become the “chaperones” of the webpage so they can guide sellers through the process and they retain a 3 percent commission on accepted instant offers.

“And that’s a game-changer,” says JP.

Burns relocated to Dallas from Seattle earlier this year with his firm. He says Texas is a preferable market for the rapidly growing iBuyer market, more so than Seattle, because of our relatively affordable home prices.

“The iBuyer space has not made a strong presence in the Seattle market because the median sales price is $669,500, way too high for iBuyers,” says Burns.

Seattle is home to Zillow, Amazon, Microsoft, and other high tech companies, but not likely to be an iBuyer hub.

“Texas is a sweet spot as far as home prices that work well for iBuyers,” says Burns, “That’s a home usually in the $200,000- to $250,000-ish range.”

OfferAI is the first company to allow agents to take control of their own iBuyer, putting independent agents on a level playing field with the well-financed iBuyer start-ups, who are moving in with growing market share in suburban Dallas areas. To compete, both Coldwell Banker and Keller Williams are creating their own iBuyer programs for their respective agents. Keller is set to announce one this spring.

“We are now empowering agents in a field where they are being marginalized by the big iBuyer players, so they can finally compete,” says Burns.

OfferAI connects to an API (Application Program Interface) within a bot-driven experience to gather initial data on a house. From there the seller is interviewed online on home condition and attributes, as the algorithm is adjusted up or down.

Instead of answering “what’s my house worth”, it’s “here’s an offer for your house”,” says Burns.

But the agent has complete control of the process, acting as a “chaperone” to the webpage. (OpenDoor and other iBuyers employ their own agents.) Agents can use their knowledge and experience to research or confirm comparables, and continue to represent the seller as an iBuyer or traditional agent, should they decide to sell the home in the conventional listing manner.

“Through our proprietary technology, our agents will be able to get clients an instant offer and short closing free from the hassles of listings, showings, open houses,” says JP.

The full 3 percent agent commission will be paid to the listing agent, and figured into the offer.

Properties will either be purchased by hedge funds who buy and hold, or by other independent investor buyers.

OfferAI is free and only available to JPAR agents and brokers currently.

“Exciting times are ahead as we continue to find ways to lead with new technology and services for our agents and exceed the expectations of our clients,” says JP.

As the largest independently owned real estate company in Texas, JP & Associates boasted more than $2.6 billion in current sales, 1500 plus agents, and 21 offices . JP & Associates REALTORS® has received a plethora of notable accolades: Real Trends Top 500 Brokerages for volume and sales in the United States (top one percent for total sales), consecutively ranked on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing US companies, and named as one of the Top 100 Places to Work by The Dallas Morning News. JP & Associates REALTORS® also has one of the highest retention rates in the industry: over 90 percent. The company was started by JP in his Frisco home in 2011.

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