Exclusive: Howard Hanna left out of Open Real Estate plans, CEO says
OpenRE’s founders say they want to work with everyone in the industry. But Howard Hanna, which already has a similar product, wonders why it wasn’t consulted.
Key points:
- Howard Hanna’s CEO expressed appreciation for the idea behind Open Real Estate but raised questions about why some brokerage leaders, including him, were not asked to weigh in.
- Howard Hanna already has Find It First, a similar product that it developed years ago. Since the firm has already put considerable resources into the platform, Hoby Hanna suggested that his company is unlikely to join OpenRE.
- With OpenRE’s founders inviting leaders across the industry to help shape its creation, Hanna wonders if there may be too many “chefs in the kitchen” — and whether that could stall or derail OpenRE’s eventual launch.
Though this week's introduction of the forthcoming Open Real Estate (OpenRE) listings platform has been widely praised, the leader of one of the nation's biggest independent brokerages has questions — and a few concerns.
On Oct. 26, brokerage leaders from AGNT Inc., HomeServices of America, Keller Williams and Real REMAX Group announced plans to create the platform, which they say is intended to be a resource for collaboration and facilitating the consumer's best interest on both sides of the transaction. The initiative received early support from many industry leaders, including Robert Reffkin, chairman and CEO of brokerage giant Compass International Holdings.
Still, OpenRE is far from launch-ready. Its founders haven't yet assembled an executive team, chosen a tech vendor or finalized governance. As these elements come together, they say they want industrywide input.
But in a recent interview with Real Estate News, Howard Hanna Real Estate CEO Howard "Hoby" Hanna IV said the four mostly franchise companies behind the platform haven't consulted with his firm even though Howard Hanna already has a similar product. What's more, there's a real risk with having "so many chefs in the kitchen," he said — and it could impact how plans for OpenRE proceed.
A good idea — in theory
"I think it's great that brokerages want to come together — really these are franchise companies that are coming together, not really brokerage firms — [to try] to provide a solution," Hanna said.
The CEO said he believes the industry is moving in the direction that OpenRE is trying to facilitate, one in which agents across different brokerages can potentially share listings in a cooperative way before those listings are publicly marketed.
"The MLSs that are willing to cooperate with brokerage firms on that data distribution are going to be the MLSs that are sustainable in the marketplace," he added.
But iterations already exist
However, Hanna has questions about how the platform will come about. He also wonders why Howard Hanna, a significant player in the brokerage landscape, wasn't consulted — especially since his firm has a similar program available in-house.
"We already have built the solution at Howard Hanna," Hanna said, referring to Find It First. The program, which was announced in mid-2019, allows anyone with an account on the Howard Hanna website to see the brokerage's listings before they are distributed elsewhere.
Hanna said his company invested millions building the single-point-of-entry platform with Ocusell and worked with MLSs to ensure that the listings that show up comply with local MLS rules. Working side by side with HannaList, the brokerage's pre-marketing program, agents are also able to access all of the firm's marketing solutions in one place before a listing transitions to full public marketing.
When he and the rest of the real estate community heard about OpenRE this week, Hanna said he was "surprised" that its founders hadn't looked into similar solutions that already exist or reached out to the companies behind those products about potential partnerships.
"I know they said, 'Oh, we're going to talk to other brokers,'" Hanna said. "We weren't invited to come to the table."
Howard Hanna unlikely to sign up
That invitation for industry feedback could also put the platform at risk of becoming another initiative that is never completed, like the now-defunct Upstream of a decade ago. "My concern is, if you get so many chefs in the kitchen, will anybody actually finish the stew?" Hanna wondered.
"It's a wonderful headline, and it shows that there's collaboration," he said of Monday's announcement. "Collaboration is good, but I think our program never prohibited collaboration."
"I'm not speaking for Compass," Hanna added, "but I'm not even sure … that they were looking at prohibiting collaboration with other brokerage firms, in terms of data sharing."
As plans for OpenRE move forward, Hanna said he will "be interested to learn more." However, he suggested that Howard Hanna is unlikely to join OpenRE since the company has already invested so much in its own platform and expects 75 MLSs to be mapped within it by next summer.