‘White Glove’ Real Estate Disruptor Taps Tech to Elevate User Experience and Accelerate Growth

How luxury real estate firm The Agency is driving its next phase of growth amid digital disruption:

• As digital interactions transform the real estate sector, boutique firm The Agency acquired Triplemint — a tech-focused startup that combines functions previously scattered among disparate real estate platforms — to accelerate growth, logging $12.4 billion in 2022 sales volume.
• Real-time data, enhanced communication and scheduling capabilities, and a turnkey marketing template are among the tools The Agency will now offer high-end property buyers, sellers, and real estate agents.
• Now supported by a new digital platform and search engine, The Agency is ramping up its global expansion.

Luxury real estate firm The Agency is seeking to take its knack for branding to the next level with a technology-driven customer experience.

The Los Angeles-based company recently acquired a technology-centric real estate firm in New York called Triplemint, and the two companies have merged their capabilities in an effort to provide a comprehensive digital platform for high-end property buyers, sellers, and agents. The move comes as the real estate industry has increasingly leveraged digital platforms that seek to provide enhanced experiences for customers.

“Triplemint was already a well-established brand in New York, and they were creating a real estate brokerage firm more through tech,” said Mauricio Umansky, Founder and CEO of The Agency. “We looked at creating a real estate brokerage firm more through brand and marketing.”

In addition to running a successful boutique real estate firm known for handling multimillion-dollar properties, Umansky is also appearing in a new Netflix series called "Buying Beverly Hills," which highlights what it’s like to work at The Agency.

Umansky founded The Agency in 2011 and has since grown it to more than 70 offices across the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Europe. The company carved out a unique niche in the real estate industry with a focus on providing high levels of service to the customer, disrupting the traditional real estate sales model that had become more transaction-oriented.

As Umanksy explained in a video interview, The Agency took a different approach to working with agents in which these independent salespeople actually function more as advisors, working together in support of The Agency as a brand. The company’s agents, now numbering more than 1,500, are carefully screened and provided with creative support so they can focus on giving white-glove attention to customers.

The Agency said it tallied $12.4 billion in sales volume in 2022, up almost 10% over 2021 sales volume, and up 148% over the last five years.

Now, Umansky is gearing up for further expansion around the globe, aided by the enhanced capabilities that Triplemint brought to the table.

After meeting David Walker, the Co-founder and CEO of Triplemint and now the Chief Strategy Officer at The Agency, the two soon realized that by combining forces, “one plus one could equal four or five,” said Umansky.

“We were both very excited about the complementary skills that we had,” he said.

The fact that Triplemint had an established presence in New York, one of the markets where the Agency had been seeking to expand, was a bonus, Umansky said.

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Tapping tech to view market data and track properties

Triplemint had focused on creating an end-to-end proprietary technology platform that combines some of the functions that historically have been provided by multiple sources, such as local multiple listing service (MLS) platforms, private databases that are created, maintained, and paid for by real estate professionals to help their clients buy and sell property, and other real estate websites.

“More often than not, agents and clients are searching and interacting around properties and all sorts of third-party websites,” said Walker. “So much information is lost because there’s not one cohesive platform.”

The advanced features that are being incorporated into The Agency’s website include functionality that enhances how agents and clients can view market data, track properties, schedule appointments, communicate about locations, and more.

The platform also includes a “creative center,” which provides tools that can assist in the marketing of homes. It allows agents to easily assemble marketing materials for the properties they are seeking to sell.

“When we get a listing, we believe that part of the role of the brokerage should be to provide the best marketing to help sell the home,” said Walker, noting that historically, many agents of high-end homes have created their own marketing materials using tools such as PowerPoint.

“What we're trying to do is really just create a better experience, primarily using the website and the search engine for property, so that the agents can communicate properly with the seller and with their clients,” said Umansky.

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Real estate tech — and startups — transform the industry

A report from real estate services firm JLL Technologies last year found that technology is evolving rapidly in the real estate industry. The number of technology startups in the industry have grown by 300% in the last three to 10 years, and now number nearly 8,000, the company said.

“Our industry is right on the cusp of impactful change driven by widespread technology adoption,” said Raj Singh, Managing Partner of JLL Spark, the global venture fund of JLL Technologies.

The COVID-19 pandemic only accelerated the drive toward technology-driven real estate solutions, according to JLL Technologies.

Companies such as Zillow and Redfin were among the pioneers that paved the path to the digitalization of the real estate industry at large.

With the rich functionality that Triplemint has brought to The Agency, Umansky and Walker are seeking to set a new standard for how technology can enhance the experience of buying and selling luxury real estate for everyone involved, they said.

“The Agency has a proven track record of being able to leverage its brand to sell our clients’ homes for more money and faster,” said Walker. “The launch of the new website only furthers the ability for us to capture more buyer demand to further our service offering to every seller.”

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