Where Real Estate Gets Its Dirt

Marnie Blanco returns to online real estate

Former Re/Max exec joins dotloop

“Marnie Blanco, who led real estate franchisor Re/Max Inc.’s broker- and agent-facing technology initiatives for close to 10 years, is joining paperless real estate transaction management firm dotloop to help the start-up build relationships with brokers.”

Marnie BlancoWhoa! I have written about Marnie’s departure from RE/MAX just this past December, seems like she just couldn’t get real estate out of her blood. The Inman article also has a Google + interview of her with Paul Hagey (smile Paul, it won’t hurt I promise). I confess not to know too much about dotloop but they have my respect for knowing how to pick talent. Marnie is rockstar and if the past is any indication they will have to keep up with her (so no pressure Marie).

The article also has this tidbit.

“In May 2012, dotloop, which was founded in 2009, had 35 to 40 employees. Now, Allison said, it has 105 employees in its headquarters in Cincinnati, a relatively new office in San Francisco and now Denver, where Blanco lives and the company expects to open an office.”

109 employees (mostly in Cincinnati?) with a new office in San Francisco and now possibly one in Denver? That’s a lot of overhead. Less than a year ago they raised 7 million dollars from venture capital firm Trinity Ventures, so that helps.

I’ve always been a bit skeptical of the whole idea of “transaction management”. Seems like a very tough problem to solve and there are too many competing platforms, regional nuances, state regulation, etc. But its clear something needs to make the process better. But it isn’t going to happen overnight. Like a castle siege, dotloop is going to need all the resources they can spare to penetrate the tall walls of paper and deep moat of ink surrounding today’s real estate transaction.

Can you tell I’ve been watching too much Game of Thrones lately?

  1. The overhead sounds massive, but if they’re hiring based on sales growth, they must be doing extremely well. I’d love to know the revenue per employee number.

    Maybe Fidelity, First Am, or a lender will jump on this and replace their current transaction management systems.

    The title companies need an agnostic transaction solution to rule the market. Agents can’t drive 100% of transactions into a single title company which makes the proprietary title solutions a negative.

  2. @Robert I hear nothing but positive things about dotloop and they seem to be closing some big deals. Who knows, maybe they can capture a large percentage of the transactions.

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