The January 2010 issue of Seattle Magazine features a great story about findwell and what we are trying to do to change the real estate market. Pick up your issue at the newsstands or check it out online here.

Change Agents: Web-based Real Estate

When some real estate start-ups entered the business, they set out to transform the industry via technology. Though agent compensation still divides them, the line between old school and new school is blurring.

Seattle real estate startup findwell is proud to announce that it has secured its next round of financing led by Shannon Ressler. Existing findwell investor Kevin Lisota also participated in the round. Today’s funding announcement is a series-SK round of funding of an additional $41.73.

According to CEO Kevin Lisota, findwell plans to use the additional capital to expand its ability to deliver extremely high levels service to home buyers and sellers. “We identified two key bets for this round of funding,” said Lisota. “We have been writing a lot of offers for home buyers lately and ran out of copy paper. When visiting OfficeMax, Shannon forgot to bring her company credit card and decided to invest an additional $39.23 of her own funds to continue to scale our infrastructure.” Lisota’s additional capital contribution of $2.50 was used to expand field operations when he fed a parking meter while touring homes in Seattle.

findwell is also pleased to announce a strategic investment made today by Estately CEO Galen Ward. At a lunch meeting between these Seattle real estate startups, Ward identified a strategic investment opportunity when findwell CEO Lisota was short $10 for his burger and fries. “At a time when the real estate market is struggling, findwell continues to grow. I was excited to spot them $10 for a tasty burger to help them become a market leader in the $1 trillion residential real estate industry,” said Ward.

As part of the investment, Ward joins findwell’s board of directors. “Ward’s technical savvy and expertise in online real estate search are a perfect fit for us,” says findwell CEO Lisota. “Not only does he share our affinity for a juicy burger, but his thinking will help us find our “secret sauce” to become the next big thing in the real estate industry. I neglected to mention to Galen that we do not actually have a board of directors, but we will still accept his “burger-loan” mentoring until we pay him back his 10 bucks.”

findwell is also planning to raise another round of funding on Tuesday when it sells yet another home in Seattle. “We are starting to lose count of these funding rounds as we sell more and more homes,” says Lisota. findwell plans to use next week’s round of funding to purchase a mere 10 lines of code from the real estate search developers at Estately. “In addition to writing elegant code, Estately takes the extra step to coat each line of code with platinum. Platinum prices on the commodities market have risen ~75% this year, driving the price of Estately code to over $500/line, so we need next week’s funding round to procure these snippets of pure coding genius.”

This financing round and strategic investment caps a year of findwell growth:

• Revenue and home sales volume has increased 3.5x over 2008
• findwell launched a major update to its real estate search, powered by Estately technology
• 2009 will mark the first profitable year for findwell
• Traffic to the findwell.com website is up 500% over the previous year

findwell is headquartered in Seattle and currently serves home buyers and sellers in the Puget Sound region. For more information and commentary from the findwell team, follow the findwell blog at http://blog.findwell.com.

One of the most rewarding parts about being a real estate agent is handing the keys over to brand-new homeowners. I had the privilege to close a transaction for first-time buyers this week in Woodinville. The transaction was a short sale, and it was the most challenging and messy transaction we have done in the past year. I was convinced on three separate occasions that it would never close, yet after three months of seemingly insurmountable hurdles, we closed this week. Needless to say, the buyers are elated with their new home.

In a most unexpected show of gratitude, they brought me a findwell cake when we met at the house to hand them the keys. I was surprised and humbled by the gesture and am very happy that our customer service exceeded their expectations.

“Thanks to your tenacity and hard work, we are new homeowners!”

I can think of no stronger customer endorsement of our real estate services. We look forward to exceeding more customer expectations in the future (and receiving more tasty cakes!)

We are pleased to announce a major upgrade to our website this morning, designed to help home buyers search for homes quickly and easily. The biggest change is that we have a brand new home search powered by Estately, enabling customers to search for homes in the Seattle area on one of the best websites out there. We listened to a lot of customer feedback, and it was clear that people want a real estate site that is loaded with information about homes and neighborhoods, yet is super easy to use. By partnering with Estately to provide our search capabilities, we have all of that and more. I encourage you to try out the new site, and humbly think that it provides a better search experience than many of the big brokerage websites in the Seattle area today. You can jump directly to the search by visiting search.findwell.com or view a copy of our press release here.

New findwell Search Features

findwell’s new search is based on data from the Northwest Multiple Listing Service (MLS), so buyers can be assured that they are viewing the most current available listings in the Seattle area. Here are some highlights of the new features now available to findwell customers:

• My findwell – Save personalized lists of properties, get automatic updates for new listings, and easily share your favorites and searches with friends. Friends can also comment on your listings.
• Transit Search – Limit your home search to homes that are near light rail and bus stops.
• Walk Score™ Search – Find a walkable place to live by searching for homes that are close to nearby stores, restaurants, schools and parks.
• Hide a Home – Hide listings from your searches that you no longer want to include.
• Neighborhood Search – Find homes in a specific neighborhood simply by typing the name of the neighborhood.
• Free Text Search – Looking for a “fixer” or something “funky”? Simply type in those words to quickly sift through listings.
• Google Street View – View images of the surrounding neighborhood online.
• School Details – Quickly view nearby schools and school ratings.
• Listing History – Look for past price and status changes to identify seller motivation.
• Previous Sales – Find out when a home last sold and what the sale price was.

Helping You Find a “Transit-Friendly” Place to Live

The new website also incorporates two awesome features to help you find homes that are near local bus or light rail stops and that are within easy walking distance of local amenities, such as stores, schools, parks and restaurants. You are able to search based on the Walk Score of particular homes, or you can specify a maximum distance to a local bus stop or rail stations.

Unmatched Customer Service

If you find a home that you like, our new website makes it easy to schedule a time to go see the home with one of our findwell agents. Our agents are experts on the local real estate market and available to help you at any time to get you through the process of buying or selling a home. Our agents are 100% focused on customers, and they don’t have to spend time prospecting for their next client. Because of this, we are able to charge 1/2 of what a traditional broker charges for real estate commissions, saving you a ton of money in the process.

Our Service Area

Our new site provides search capabilities throughout Western Washington, but we are currently only able to provide agent services in the Seattle metropolitan area. If you are a fan of the new search technology, but coming to us from another state, we encourage you to check out www.estately.com. They currently provide real estate search and referrals to experienced agents in Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Chicago and Atlanta.

It is time to update our blog readers with our market statistics for the month of June 2009. We had a record month at findwell for buyer and seller activity, partly due to the market uptick in June, but also due to increasing awareness of our services in the Seattle real estate market.

Lots of Offer Activity

Our buyer activity for June broke all of our internal records. (We are still a startup, so admittedly this isn’t too hard to do.) We remain cautiously optimistic that market activity will continue at this pace.

• findwell agents led buyers on tours of 176 homes this month, a 21% increase over May. Home tours in June are up 163% from February and March levels.
• On average, each findwell agent has been inside ~230 homes so far this year, so you can be assured that the agent negotiating your home purchase is a true market expert.
• fiona, the findwell MINI Cooper, clocked 1514 miles on home tours and needed a couple car washes after a very busy month.
• The number of offers submitted and received by findwell increased 55% over May. Overall offer activity is triple the levels that we saw during the winter.
• 21% of offers placed in June were on bank-owned (REO) properties or short sales.
• We had just one transaction fail in June, due to an unanticipated job loss for our buyer.

Seller Traffic Still Strong

• findwell sellers averaged 9 showings of their property for June, which was down from May, but a number of properties were not on the market for the entire month which skews the statistics.
• Our agents received direct feedback from 68% of agents who showed our listings.
• For 2009, findwell’s listings have sold for an average of –0.6% off of list price and are currently averaging 47 days on market before accepting an offer.

Customer Quote of the Month

“I recently bought a foreclosed house from Fannie Mae using Kevin Lisota as my representative. The laborious Fannie Mae processes and procedures made the transaction extremely difficult and complicated. Kevin and the findwell team were able to identify, negotiate and successfully navigate the potential pitfalls involved with purchasing a foreclosed house. Looking back, it is almost comical how ridiculous the Fannie Mae requirements were. I would not think it was comical if I did not actually close on the transaction. With all the complications, Kevin kept a great attitude and continued to provide valuable insights and advice on how to move forward. They truly have done an excellent job and I could not provide a stronger recommendation for any real estate professional I have had the opportunity to work with. If you are buying a house with potential complications, findwell has the expertise to get the job done!” – Mark H.

It is time to update our blog readers with our statistics for the month of May 2009. Sales activity is way up, though it seems concentrated in certain segments of the housing market right now.

Sales Activity Strengthens

Improving on an already strong April, findwell agents were super busy with home tours and placing offers. Spring is a traditionally strong sales season for real estate every year, but we’ve seen some surprising strength in certain segments of the market.

• findwell agents led buyers on tours of 145 homes, a 51% increase from April. Overall, home tours are up 116% from February and March levels.
• fiona, the findwell MINI Cooper, clocked 1323 miles on home tours.
• The number of offers submitted and received by findwell increased 150% over April.
• 38% of offers placed in May were on bank-owned (REO) properties or short sales, an marked increase from April.
• We had two transactions fail in May. The first transaction was a vacant land purchase that didn’t work out when the engineer provided a negative feasibility study report. The second transaction fell apart on a new construction purchase where the builder was more than 6 months behind on their promised completion date.

Sellers Continue to See More Traffic

• findwell sellers averaged 15 showings of their property for May, a 66% increase from April.
• Our agents received direct feedback from 74% of agents who showed our listings.
• For 2009, findwell’s listings have sold for an average of –0.7% off of list price and are currently averaging 54 days on market before accepting an offer.

Some Competition Returns

In an unexpected turn, our buyers got outbid four times this month! Most of the competitive bidding situations seem to be occurring on single-family homes in the <$400k price range. While most of these homes are not being bid up over list price, we had one notable exception on a bank-owned property. The bank priced the home at ~$75k under market value, which resulted in 11 bids in one day. The winning offer was likely +$70k over list price!

Customer Quote of the Month

“Thanks for the great job helping me to buy my first home! I didn’t realize that it was going to be such an adventure to buy a home, but you guys were pros. You kept things on track and got the deal done, even when it didn’t look like it was going to work out. Also, thanks for the extra help during the inspection process. You really went above and beyond my expectations by seeking repair bids and ultimately coordinating a bunch of repairs so that the house was ready for us to move in on the closing date.”

Tweet, Tweet, Tweet

We continue to see more and more people engaging with us via social media, such as our blog, Facebook or Twitter. In fact, we got our first customer from Twitter just this month!

I recently sat down and interviewed Michael Wilson, the first agent we hired at findwell, to get his impressions after his first year with us. Michael has been a rock star agent for us, negotiating great deals for his clients and going the extra mile to make sure that his clients are 100% satisfied with their home buying or selling experience. He came to us from RE/MAX, a traditional real estate brokerage, so there have been some big changes for him.

Kevin: What is the biggest change about being a findwell agent?

Michael: The hardest part about being a traditional agent was worrying about where my next client was going to come from. I was 100% responsible for my own marketing and prospects, and quite honestly it was the part of the business that I couldn't stand. I’d much rather spend my time helping people to buy and sell homes, but found myself usually spending 50%, sometimes up to 75%, of my time looking for the next customer. I think that is a pretty common experience for many real estate agents. findwell’s model has been a great change. They take care of all marketing and lead generation for their agents, freeing me up to spend close to 100% of my time on the best part of the business, which is helping people to buy and sell their homes. It’s been great having new customers just fall in my lap.

Kevin: Would you say that you are doing more business now than when you were with RE/MAX?

Michael: It has been a huge difference. Not only do I have more time to work with clients, but I’m working with 3x more clients at any given time. I love being this busy and ultimately I’m a better agent because I’m able to do more transactions. Real estate is a business that you learn by doing. Each transaction presents unique challenges and scenarios, and I find myself learning more about real estate with every deal that I do. With my higher transaction volume, I’m positive that I’ve learned more in a year than I did in all my years at RE/MAX.

Kevin: How is the atmosphere different working at findwell?

Michael: When you work for a traditional real estate company, you are an independent contractor, not an employee. At findwell, the agents are full-time employees, with a requirement to be in the office during business hours. I was initially hesitant to give up my independence, but the atmosphere is way better as an employee. findwell agents don’t compete with one another and are encouraged to work as a team. I found teamwork at a traditional brokerage to be non-existent. It is a cutthroat, fend-for-yourself environment where agents won’t help each other and often will compete directly with you to take business away.

Kevin: Is it more fun working at findwell?

Michael: Real estate has always been fun for me, but I definitely love being part of a team with bigger goals. I can see the contributions I make not only growing my own career, but also contributing to help grow the company. findwell also makes sure that we both work hard and play hard. Whether it is an outing on a sailboat, the company holiday party, or simply an extra day off when we’ve been super busy, I like that they are looking out for our work/life balance, which is always hard as a real estate agent.

Kevin: You’re paid a salary. Every agent will ask if you could make more if you were paid strictly on commissions. Now that you’ve been at this year, what do you think?

Michael: The salary versus commission debate certainly was part of my decision making process when I joined findwell. My take home pay last year was very comparable to previous years at RE/MAX, and now I don’t have to worry about the huge peaks and valleys in my income as I wait for the next commission check to come in. I also don’t have to worry about covering the huge number of expenses of being an agent. findwell also has a bonus structure in place to help agents share in the profits when business is booming. I’m confident that once we see the real estate market pick up again, I’ll have a great opportunity to participate in the profits I’m helping to bring in.

Kevin: How do you compare the resources available to you previously at RE/MAX and now at findwell?

Michael: My broker at RE/MAX was very helpful on a variety of legal and real estate matters and certainly helped point me in the right direction. However, I can’t help but feel that most traditional brokers are all about attracting agents to their brokerage, not attracting customers to help their agents succeed. findwell has been much different. They are relentless about marketing by making sure to measure the ROI of every campaign they do. There isn’t a day that goes by when the company leadership isn’t trying to attract more customers for the team. They are also on the cutting edge technology-wise, actively engaging our clients on social media like our blog, Facebook or Twitter. I can’t help but think that this sort of marketing is the future for real estate agencies.

If you are looking for a great real estate agent in the Seattle area, you can contact Michael Wilson at mwilson@findwell.com

Starting this month, I am going to put together a monthly statistical update for findwell and share it with our readers of the findwell blog.

More Buyer Activity

April was a busy month for findwell agents, both for home tours and placing offers.

• findwell agents led buyer on tours of 96 homes, a 43% increase from March.
• fiona, the findwell MINI Cooper, clocked 1134 miles during home tours.
• 27% of offers placed in April were on short-sales or bank-owned properties
• We had two transactions fail in April. One offer fell apart because of lender who provided incorrect numbers on his Good Faith Estimate. The other transaction was cancelled after review of condo HOA association documents.

Sellers See Uptick in Traffic

• findwell sellers averaged 9 showings of their property for April, a 31% increase from March.
• Our agents received direct feedback from 73% of agents who showed our listings.
• For 2009, findwell’s listings have sold for an average of –0.7% off of list price and are currently averaging 46 days on market before accepting an offer.

Customers Making the Switch

• findwell continued to win over customers from competing real estate companies. Our new customers in April included:
  • 4 customers who switched from Redfin
  • 3 customers who switched from RE/MAX
  • 1 customer who switched from John L Scott
  • 1 customer who chose findwell over Windermere

findwell also hosted 26 home buyers and sellers who came to our home buying/home selling classes. findwell customers also devoured 3 large pizzas and numerous beers at our “Ask the Agent” Open House.

Customer Quote of the Month

“They toured us through homes on our schedule, and shepherded a relatively complicated sale through to completion, keeping us in the loop along the way. If we purchase another home in the area, it will definitely be through findwell, although we don't plan to move for a good long while as the home we're in is perfect.”

Watch for May Report

Let us know what other statistics you would like to see for our upcoming report in May.

We are hosting a focus group on Thursday, June 11 and are looking for ~10 participants to talk about how we can improve findwell’s real estate services. We’re in the midst of planning the next major update to our service, including a set of big changes for our website and need help from customers to fine tune our plans.

If you’re interested, please contact us at info@findwell.com to see if you’re a good fit for the focus group. We’ll give each participant $50 and will provide dinner and drinks.

We have a guest post on the Seattle technology news site TechFlash. I share some of the marketing tips and tricks that have been working for us as a startup. Check out the link below:

TechFlash Guest Post: Free hot dogs and other startup marketing tricks