Compass 🧭, a real estate brokerage firm with more than 19,000 agents across the country 🗺, filed to go public on Monday, and told prospective investors 💳 that revenue jumped 56% last year as housing prices soared ↗️. Founded in 2012, the New York-based 🗽 company has sought to bring advanced technology 💻 to real estate agents, giving them better data 🔢, marketing tools and customer relationship software 💾 than they can get from a typical brick-and-mortar brokerage.
Shopping 🛍 for their first home in New Jersey, Alyse Storzieri and her boyfriend 👩❤️💋👨 Robert Engel faced a tough 💪 market. So when they found 🕵️ a house they loved last June, the couple followed their real estate agent's advice to make their offer stand out 🚨. They went over the asking price, tripled their down payment amount and agreed to waive the home inspection 🔬.
The real estate industry has seen plenty of technological 🤖 upheavals since the pandemic 🦠 began. As agents faced the unprecedented uncertainty of the past year, they quickly ⏱adopted tools to keep sales 🤑 moving, from video 🎥 tours to 3D 🕶 walkthroughs to FaceTime 📱 showings.
What buyers need to know right now: 1. “Money 💰 has not been this cheap to borrow 💳 in a very long time 📅,” says Graham Ross, manager of Just Property Blouberg. “If you are going to buy, now ⏲ is the time. You may find you are able to afford 💸 a bigger bond, which could put you in an area where a year ago you could not afford to buy.”