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By Monica Sager
Live News Reporter
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What's New
A new real estate tech startup is allowing home buyers to see the demographic backgrounds of their neighbors, including their political affiliations.
Why It Matters
Real estate agents are increasingly being cut out of the homebuying process, as prospective home buyers are turning to online platforms and brokerage fees keep raising. While the internet has made it easier for buyers to access granular data about their neighborhoods, down to the block, housing platforms are not readily sharing the information. Now with the addition of a recent class action lawsuit that sent shockwaves through the industry, Oyssey is working to going beyond the typical housing search filters and allow for better agent integration.
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What To Know
With 93 percent of home buyers in 2023 having regrets, according to a Clever Real Estate study, Nierenberg said the ongoing interest in Oyssey shows that home buyers need not only contract protections but also additional data information on their property prospects. Nierenberg said this data clearly shows a "pushback" between how saturated the professionals within the field are and how "poorly perceived" the industry is overall.
What is Oyssey?
Oyssey is a real estate search management platform with agent integration. Beyond the typical housing search filters, Oyssey allows potential buyers to look at social and political data.
"A lot of people want to buy into new construction communities because they have some level of expectation of what kind of community they're entering," Huw Nierenberg, the chief executive officer of Oyssey, told Newsweek. "I think the allure of buying into an existing community where you don't have shared characteristics...I think it makes it challenging for buyers to even consider a lot of existing inventory."
With Oyssey, a real estate agent with a subscription invites a potential buyer to join the Oyssey real estate search management platform for free. Once people agree to the terms of use, privacy policy and buy brokerage fee agreement, they can search properties with their agent's help.
When a property sparks a new buyer's interest, their agent can interact with them on the listing by uploading files and documents, "keeping everything centralized."
"It's a customer purchasing management platform that allows brokerages to handle all of the chaos with a consumer protection legal strategy," Nierenberg said.
Nierenberg, who is a former Boston real estate agent, is not suggesting people don't consider whether a house has a leak or mold of some type, but instead, the community data—which comes from precinct information—is able to position buyers to pick better homes. This additional data "incentivizes" buyers to commit to potential home repairs and add value to the community overall, Nierenberg said.
"A lot of buyers look at a handful of properties, and they might have three or four properties they really like," Nierenberg said. "At the end of the day, if they had some additional data that helped increase their comfort or confidence in a certain home, that home becomes a better purchase for them."
2025 Real Estate Changes
A recent class action lawsuit settlement against the National Association of Realtors means that buyers will be required to sign contracts with agents to tour homes as well as negotiate commission payments starting in 2025.
Nierenberg said that with the Department of Justice's decision, the overall home buyer industry would change over the next 18 months.
"That's why we're incredibly excited and grateful to be launching this product right now because it gives independent brokerages and agents and brokers that are really trying to prioritize consumer protection and trying to align themselves with buyers, an opportunity to use the product that really adds value for their buyers," Nierenberg said. "We're making contracts something the buyer has control over."
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Nierenberg said that the overall real estate industry has been "catering to the platforms," like Zillow, for "far too long." He noted that agents have called the platforms recently "predatory" and a way to "degrade the value of homes as an investment." It was his own experience with home buying in his 20s that pushed Nierenberg to provide data and a better relationship for all within the market.
"The buyers and agents are fed up with the platforms," Nierenberg said. "They're not in the business of helping buyers buy the best possible homes they can buy in our opinion, and I think there's a gap in the market where someone can come in very rapidly and push back on the platforms and provide genuine value to buyers."
Newsweek reached out to Zillow for comment.
What People Are Saying
Barbara May, a realtor in Florida, told Newsweek: "I think there's a lot of people that would be interested in that for political reasons. For me, I don't think that's a good idea."
Huw Nierenberg, the chief executive officer of Oyssey, told Newsweek: "The average agent is collecting less and less commission, and you have all kinds of challenges where the buyer, and agent relationship has become incredibly tarnished. It's hard for them to work together online and collaborate as a team effectively. This is a multi-part solution that really fixes it for buyers and fixes it for agents together and kind of fixes it for the platforms because we're able to push back against them."
What Happens Next
Oyssey is soft launching in southern Florida and New York City within the coming weeks. Nierenberg said the product is expected to be launched nationwide by the spring.
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