So why is it that the dating marketplace has taken full advantage of Internet technology, spawning dozens of services like Match.com and eHarmony, while Real Estate CRM still remains mostly stuck in the analog era?

Oh sure, there are big CRM software packages that have been harnessed (sort of) and adapted (sort of) to the real estate business. And there are real-estate-specific CRM applications, like our own Propertybase, that do a good job of managing contacts, collecting customer data, and even helping out with marketing.
But where is the Match.com of the real-estate world?

In an insightful 2008 blog post, real estate management guru Rob Hahn declared that CRM would be the killer app for the real estate industry. And yet, nearly two years later, nothing much has changed.

We think Hahn is right. CRM is the killer app for the real estate industry, and we spend every day trying to make a better platform for delivering it. So we’d like to share a little bit of our vision for the future.

First of all, let’s make clear that we’re not talking about a real-estate “dating” service that connects individual home sellers directly to buyers. That’s the real-estate agent’s worst nightmare. No, we believe that agents and brokers will always have a place in the real estate transaction—as long as they can know their customers and their customers’ needs well enough to truly add value.

That’s why CRM is the killer app. The agent or broker who knows their customer best can add the most value. And as Hahn points out, in an industry that has become largely commoditized, that personal touch is one of the few ways you can really set yourself apart.

So let’s take a look at what is right and wrong with current real estate CRM and see where we think it’s headed in the future.

Today’s real estate CRM tools (ours included) primarily support the process between the agent and the client. They are great for helping an agent:


1. Generate leads from a web presence or through email campaigns
2. Stay on top of follow-ups, so no opportunities slip through the cracks
3. Profile each prospect, to personalize their service
4. Save time on administrative tasks, gaining more face time with clients


BUT none of the current tools (ours included) really address the fact that agents don’t work alone!


The fact is, most deals are a co-production of at least two agents. And most agents regularly collaborate with the same bunch of people (other agents) and/or companies (brokers, developers, builders, etc.)

We think the real estate CRM of the future will nourish and reward a full and open exchange of information within this extended web of partners.

Perhaps it won’t look quite like Match.com, but we envision a social network similar to a dating platform, but where the participants are trading in “deals” rather than “dates.”

Imagine, for example, a system where you register a potential buyer and immediately get a handful of anonymous proposals suggesting well-matched listings—instead of the current system where you spend your precious time browsing through half-a-dozen mediocre MLS websites looking for needles in the haystack. The time you save means more face-time with clients. But while this is certainly a time-saver, we agree that it’s not exactly a breakthrough.

But what about the other way around? You speak to a seller and decide to work with her on a new listing. Then, in real time, the “match-making” system allows you evaluate the potential in the market—to see how many buyers are out there with matching criteria, to see how many are “almost” matched (and perhaps how many you could pull into the net by slightly dropping the price), and even which agent you need to call to arrange a “date.” Breakthrough? We think so.

Naturally, since real estate CRM is our business, we have some ideas along these lines we’re working on. We can’t get more specific yet, of course, but we can guarantee you that the future holds some interesting developments.

We thought you might enjoy a sneak peek, so here is a “wireframe” sketch from our developers. (In case you are curious, we use Balsamiq to do our wireframing, and every part of our software and our website starts out as a sketch like this).

Cick to enlarge

What will the new Property Browser do for you?

You’ll save time:

• Search faster with the improved search technology
• Save your frequently used search criteria
• Get an instant overview with the “Portfolio” view

It’s great for your website:

• Publish ANY sort of media assets with your listings (pictures, documents, videos, etc.)
• Simply drag & drop any media asset into a category, and it will appear in that section of your website
• Add search-engine-friendly meta data to your media assets (tooltips, picture names, etc.) to help your listings get found!

Our developers are working like mad to get this new browser in your hands. Expect a release announcement soon!

With this new investment capital we are already ramping up operations at our German headquarters and internationally with new staff, new marketing projects, and of course, always-ongoing product development.

Below, you can read the text of our press release announcing our financing.


PRESS RELEASE

Worldwide First—Professional Real Estate Software “In the Clouds”

Successful Developer of SaaS Real Estate CRM Software Closes First Major Round of Investor Funding

Munich, May 2010 – The developer of the leading Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform for real estate sales, Propertybase GmbH, has successfully closed their first financing package. Based on their early success and profitable track record, Propertybase has secured investments from Bayern Kapital and Neuhaus Partners, while start-up investor High-Tech Gründerfonds will support the company as lead investor.

Propertybase is the first company to develop a complete front-and-back-office sales, marketing, and service application for real estate brokers and developers, using the “Force.com” cloud-computing platform by Salesforce.com.

As a web-based subscription service, Propertybase requires none of the large up-front investment typical of software infrastructure, making it easy for customers on any budget to get started. And as an entirely cloud-based application, Propertybase takes care of all the technical details, freeing its users from the costs and hassles normally associated with IT maintenance.

Success Right Out of the Gate

Michael Wenglein, Founder and Managing Director for Products and Services at Propertybase says: “The business model is so economical that we were able to start the company with our own private capital, and we immediately started making profits with the first pilot project 18 months ago.”

Max-Michael Mayer, Founder and Managing Director for Sales and Marketing, sees the new investment capital as the way to accelerate the company’s already rapid expansion into international markets: “Right from the start we were winning over customers in Europe, North America, the Middle East, and Australia. Now all of these early customers are enthusiastic references for us as we expand globally.”

Propertybase offers its users everything one expects in a full-fledged CRM system, such as contact management, activity coordination, and front-and-back-office administration. But then it goes further, adding industry specific features, such as offer and contract preparation, sales commission tracking, a web-based property sales module, and finance management designed specifically for realtors, real estate developers and property investors like banks and insurance companies. These industry-specific features allow real estate companies to run their entire sales, marketing, and administrative processes with Propertybase, avoiding the expense and complexity of integrating several stand-alone applications. With additional marketing tools like email campaign management and worldwide publishing to leading realty platforms, Propertybase has become the complete solution for any real estate company. And to ensure that they never miss important information, Propertybase users can choose to have all this information pushed to their desktop, iPhone, or Blackberry in real time.

First European Financing of a Salesforce.com ISV Partner

Propertybase GmbH was among the first European companies to recognize the potential of the Force.com platform and to become an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) with Salesforce.com. Following several Silicon Valley start-ups, Propertybase is now the first European company to raise venture capital for a product based on Force.com.

“Apart from the excellent product itself, we were won over by the team’s business experience and obvious skill with the Software-as-a-Service technology,” says Markus Kreßmann, Senior Investment Manager with High-Tech Gründerfonds. Investment Manager Thomas Manitta of Bayern Kapital, says, “We see great potential for this company and we believe they are ideally positioned to expand globally in this segment.” And Paul Jozefak, Managing Partner at Neuhaus Partners, who normally specialize in late-stage capital, adds, “We believe this is the right product for the marketplace, and we didn’t want to miss out on being part of this innovative approach right from the start.”

About Propertybase

Propertybase is the leading real-estate CRM solution built entirely on the Force.com “software as a service” platform. That means it exists entirely “in the cloud” and requires almost no IT investment or development from its users. Propertybase offers real-estate-specific sales, marketing, and after-sales tools, and provides a complete front- and back-office application for real estate developers, brokers, and agents. It integrates smoothly with any website and can exchange data with leading real estate portals everywhere. Propertybase has clients in Europe, North America, the Middle East and Australia with references such as Daniel Island (the leading lifestyle community in North America), Dubai World Central (Developer of the world’s largest airport community), Mubadala (Sovereign Wealth Fund of Abu Dhabi), and more. Propertybase is Made in Germany with its headquarters in Munich. For more information please visit www.propertybase.com.

Contact
Propertybase GmbH
Max-Michael Mayer
Leonrodstr. 68
80636 München
Tel.: +49 89 12224620
pr@propertybase.com
www.propertybase.com




About High-Tech Gründerfonds
High-Tech Gründerfonds invests venture capital in young, high-opportunity technological companies implementing promising research results in an entrepreneurial manner. The start-up companies are planned to lead their R&D projects to the production of a prototype or a “proof of concepts” or market launch by means of the seed financing of up to 500k EUR. The High-Tech Gründerfonds has a fund volume of around 272m EUR. Investors of the public-private partnership are the Federal Ministry for Economics and Technology, the KfW bank group as well as the six industrial groups BASF, Deutsche Telekom, Siemens, Robert Bosch, Daimler and Carl Zeiss.

Contact
High-Tech Gründerfonds Management GmbH
Markus Kreßmann
Senior Investmentmanager
Ludwig-Erhard-Allee 2
53175 Bonn
Tel.: +49 228 96568500
Fax: +49 228 96568550
m.kressmann@high-tech-gruenderfonds.de
www.high-tech-gruenderfonds.de




About Bayern Kapital
Bayern Kapital is a Bavarian venture capital company and was founded as part of the “Bavarian Future Initiative” as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the LfA Foerderbank Bayern (Bavaria’s development bank) at the end of 1995.
Overall, Bayern Kapital now manages a fund volume of 190 million Euro. Bayern Kapital invests principally in small and mid-sized companies with a strong growth potential in key industrial technologies. The investments are mainly concentrated in the information technology, measuring and control equipment, medical technology and pharmaceutical industries.

Contact:
Bayern Kapital GmbH
Thomas Manitta
Ländgasse 135 a
84028 Landshut
Tel.: +49 871 923250
Fax: +49 871 9232555
info@bayernkapital.de
www.bayernkapital.de




About Neuhaus Partners
Neuhaus Partners GmbH is one of Europe’s leading venture capital groups. It primarily invests in IT companies. Since its foundation in 1998, 53 investments have been made – Neuhaus Partners was the lead investor in 47 of these. Track record: two IPOs, eighteen trade sales, three buy-backs, ten insolvencies. Neuhaus Partners is now investing from its third generation of funds.

Contact
Neuhaus Partners GmbH
Thomas Preuß
Jungfernstieg 30
20354 Hamburg
Tel.: +49 40 3552820
Fax: +49 40 35528239
Preuss@NeuhausPartners.com
www.NeuhausPartners.com

Propertybase, the leading real estate CRM software built entirely on the Force.com platform, has gone social.

By incorporating the new Chatter social message feature from Salesforce.com, Propertybase has unleashed its users’ ability to communicate and collaborate throughout their organizations.

Using the familiar Facebook-style interface, Propertybase users can now:

• Track each other’s business activities in real time.
• “Follow” other users, prospects, or customers
• Get automated reminders of events.
• Set trigger conditions on accounts, and receive alerts if the trigger event happens.
• Communicate broadly or narrowly with public “wall” postings or private messages.
• Coordinate and schedule events with the built-in shared calendar.

What does this mean for Real Estate Professionals?

This means Propertybase users can always be instantly aware of:

• New property listings
• Price changes and updates
• Buyer and Seller Offers
• Property Viewings
• Open Houses
• And other market activities

And just as in Facebook, they can follow their colleagues’ chatter about housing prices, market demand, offer status, and property availability in real time.

“This type of interconnectivity represents the future of business collaboration,”

says Max-Michael Mayer, Managing Director at Propertybase.

“Why should the ability to communicate quickly and easily be reserved for social media, where people are chatting about what they had for breakfast? Where we really need this is in business, especially the real estate business, where market conditions change hourly, and where fast access to information can make or break a deal.”

Montgomery Hoeft, Director of Salesforce.com, adds,

“The Propertybase implementation of Chatter is a perfect use of this new Force.com platform. It brings fast and easy collaboration to an industry where speed and access to information are all-important.”

Push Technology Means “First to Know”

To ensure that they never miss important information, Propertybase users can choose to have all this information pushed to their desktop, iPhone, or Blackberry in real time.

In short, Propertybase with Chatter will help real estate professionals gain the crucial first-mover advantage that is so important in this fast-moving, competitive business.

Download the press release as pdf.

Programm aus München für Arabien
„Der App Exchange ist ein strategisches Mittel, um Programmierer dazu zu bringen, Anwendungen für diesen Teil der Software-Welt zu entwickeln“, sagt Max-Michael Mayer, Geschäftsführer des Software-Unternehmens Propertybase. Seine Firma entwickelt Cloud-Computing-Lösungen für das Kundenmanagement und vertreibt sie über den App-Store von Salesforce. Zu den Kunden des Münchener Unternehmens, das gerade neues Risikokapital eingeworben hat, gehören Firmen in Nordamerika, Australien und dem Mittleren Osten – etwa der Immobilienentwickler Emaar aus den Vereinigten Arabischen Emiraten.

Neuer Vertriebskanal senkt Kosten
Der größte Vorteil ist für viele Betriebe die unkomplizierte Handhabbarkeit der Plattform: „Sich Unternehmenssoftware herunterzuladen, ist fast so einfach wie einen Song bei iTunes zu kaufen“, sagt der Propertybase-Geschäftsführer Mayer. Doch auch wenn dieser Vertriebskanal hilft, Kosten bei der Integration zu sparen, wird noch einige Zeit vergehen, bis er sich auch in der Breite durchsetzt.

You can read the full article here.

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