While much of the housing industry is focused on the current wave of consolidation consuming the space, real estate brokerage Side is placing its bet on local and regional independent brokerages being the future of the industry.
“The prevailing narrative in the industry today is that there are going to be two or three brands that dominate real estate forever. This is not the future of the industry we want to see,” Guy Gal, the co-founder and CEO of Side, said. “At Side, we are investing in the other side of that narrative — in local, community boutique, that is what we are investing in, and we are looking to rally and organize the industry accordingly.”
The launch of SideOS
Part of this mission is the recent launch of SideOS. On the one hand, SideOS is the same operating platform that runs the back offices of more than 600 real estate companies that are already a part of Side, but now firms no longer have to be brokered by Side have access to the technology.
In late July, the company announced that the SideOS platform was now available for large independent and franchise-affiliated brokerages that want to keep their own brand, license and leadership, marking the first time Side has opened its internal operating system to the broader industry.
According to Gal, this isn’t just another transaction management system being brought to market, it’s a platform brokers can use to run their entire business without having to constantly worry about keeping track of the latest technology or developments.
Out of necessity
However, Gal said Side didn’t just wake up one day and decide to make its platform available to the broader industry.
“We started to hear from a whole host of independent brokerage owners, franchisees, even corporate firms trying to better understand how Side does what it’s doing and how we’re getting the results that we’re getting,” he said. “They were looking to learn from us.”
It was through these conversations that Gal said he and his team realized they could help by licensing their technology — something they had not previously considered. Gal said it took the company the past 12 months to figure out how to get the platform to a place where it could welcome in these large independents or franchises.
“We spent the better part of a year figuring out how we could provide everything that we do with respect to organizing, operating, managing, everything back office from origination through the pay, but doing that without being a supervising broker, even though we’re in the flow of payments and we’re handling all the disbursements,” he said.
While he said the process was complicated and involved consulting with state legislators and departments of real estate to ensure compliance, on the surface the product these independent brokerages now have access to is the same one all of their existing Side partners already use.
Boutique is better
Although this is a product Side is now offering the industry, Gal believes it will help his firm “level up” by “steering and influencing the industry and investing in having an industry that resembles what [Side] believes is better for communities, buyers, sellers, renters and agents, which is to make the industry more local, more community-oriented, more boutique and more distinct as opposed to more corporate and more one-size-fits-all.”
Large, national firms, according to Gal, have a leg up on smaller firms because their size provides them with the ability to have operational efficiency allowing them to invest in more technology and technology development.
“Our hope is that by leveling the playing field for all of these independents with SideOS and helping them raise the bar on how they compete operationally and how well they serve agents and clients, that then allows them to not only continue as an independent, but to thrive,” Gal said.
