Matching home sellers with buyers

Published 1:58 pm Tuesday, November 25, 2014

It’s like a matchmaking website.

Only for real estate.

A new company is trying to make it easier for homeowners to get a feel for interest in their home before they put their house on the market. And allow buyers to connect with them.

The online start-up service Rebls provides a website where you type in your address and see people who are looking for homes in your area. If you want to go a step further, you can post your home on the site and they’ll even send out a professional photographer for free to take pictures of your home.

Home buyers can get on the website and type in an area or ZIP code to find houses listed on Rebls.

“We’re not shy about saying we want to make real estate better than it is now,” said Adriane Holter, vice president, communications for Rebls. The business model makes it free for both the buyer and seller. The company charges a fee for real estate agents and eventually plans to do the same for title companies.

“Rebls monetizes through agents and soon lenders. Currently we just have agents on the site. Agents pay us a monthly fee to have a profile. It’s basically a marketing service for them where they create their profile,” Holter said.

The Seattle-based company launched in October in Snohomish, King and Pierce counties.

The site is only beginning to add homes. Type in Everett and no homes pop up just yet. Type in Snohomish or Lynnwood and a couple of entries turn up. That’s why the company is offering photographers to come out to homes so they can build their site.

“It’s a really cool way for us to make the site look beautiful, people like looking at beautiful photos which is great for us, the homeowner and buyer,” Holter said.

The company was initially called a Real Estate Buyers Listing Service, but was quickly shortened to the acronym “Rebls” and made a proper noun.

Rebls was founded in 2010 by Bryan Copley who was later joined by Jeff White in 2013. Copley, who is originally from Mountlake Terrace and went to Lake Stevens High School, said technology should be the catalyst to making buying and selling homes easier.

“I started Rebls because real estate should be focused on the experiences of people and their homes, not the pain of the current real estate process,” Copley said.

People using the site are able to contact other consumers on the site through Rebls’ communication platform.

“We want to create this market place for people to very early on keep a pulse on the market, and have more insight of what’s going on with their most important asset which is their home,” Holter said.

The website has partnered with real estate agents that are willing to lower their commission for clients who have matched themselves with a home on Rebls.

There is also a section of the website that says, “Find an Agent,” for those who may have more questions or do not already have an agent they work with.

“We are not trying to cut out the agent, we are just trying to make the match-making portion of real estate more efficient,” Holter said. “Agents are negotiators, educators, transaction coordinators, and the experts, that’s why we work with agents.”