Featured Startup Pitch: Agent Ace simplifies the home buying and selling experience by connecting consumers to high performing real estate agents

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By Editor May 15, 2012

AgentAce_logoCompany: Agent Ace

Website: www.agentace.com

Founder: Mazen Fawaz

Headquarters: Los Angeles

Year Founded: 2011

Twitter: @agentace_com

Brief Company Description: Agent Ace is a free service for connecting homebuyers and sellers to the highest performing real estate agent in their area.

 

Mazen_Fawaz-AgentAceBy Mazen Fawaz, Founder

Our free, web-based service for referring agents was built in response to an inconsistency we saw in the real estate industry. When compared to other industries (retail, travel, automobile), we noticed that real estate was lagging in terms of the tools people have for decision making. When looking for a flight or a new car consumers use online services to find the best deal, but when looking for an agent, the web offered no system for comparing and making an informed decision. When we started looking at historical home sales data we noticed a disparity between average and top performing agents (top agents simply sell more homes in less time), and we knew that a service that connected homebuyers and sellers to these top agents would be valuable. With this in mind, we set out to build a smarter, performance based service for connecting people with the top agent in their area. For free!

The current system for finding an agent seemed completely outdated. Why would you trust a friend-of-a-friend or a bus bench to recommend the person in charge of one of the largest transactions of your life? We decided to do better. AgentAce.com is a free and independent service that pours through historical real estate sales data to find the agent with a track record of selling more homes in less time in a given neighborhood and price range. Then we put the homebuyer or seller in touch with the top agent. Simple right?

Our Story

Agent Ace is an idea born of necessity. In 2009, I decided to do some research on commercial real estate agents I had hired to purchase retail properties in the Midwest. By collecting and studying 3rd party historical sales data I was able to get an unbiased view into the agents’ transactional history. This allowed me to choose the agent who was most likely going to succeed at those purchases. Following the success I experienced at finding agents in the commercial world, I realized the massive implications a similar system would have for residential transactions, and Agent Ace was born.

I designed a process, filed for patent, gathered a team, and launched the company in 2011. Today we are available to millions of home buyers and sellers—as a free service—leading them to the highest performing agent for their home sale or purchase.

Our Algorithm

Our strength is in numbers—not in terms of company size since we only have five employees—but in terms of what makes what we do unique. At the core of our service is a patented algorithm for comparing agents and finding the best. Unlike other real estate recommendation options that rely on reviews or on advertising from agents, Agent Ace pairs an agent’s transaction history with geographical data to make unbiased, data-driven recommendations.

By incorporating important factors like days on market and original price versus selling price in our algorithm that other agent recommendation options do not consider, we can confidently state that we are the smartest way to find an agent. Relying on actual performance data means that Agent Ace can deliver our users a result that is based on integrity. Our process allows us to guarantee each customer that we are referring them to the single highest-performing real estate agent for their needs.

Business Model

Another differentiating aspect of Agent Ace is our relationship (or lack thereof) with the agents we refer. We act as a broker for the agents we put people in contact with, and if a deal closes based on our connection; we take a percentage from the agent. Therefore, our motivation is to match people with the agent that is most likely to find or sell a property for that individual in the shortest amount of time. The agents we refer are generated by our patented algorithm. We never play favorites.

Our mission—to fundamentally change the way people go about finding a real estate agent.

Agent Ace – www.agentace.com