Real estate business owners, heads of departments and chief executives have all recently had one eye on business revenue streams and the other on expenses given the times we’ve experienced recently. However, have these businesses thought outside the square and considered additional income streams that can become ongoing?

For decades real estate business proprietors have focused on one essential reoccurring income that makes up the value or goodwill of their business, that is annual rental commissions paid to the agency by the landlords of properties managed by the agency. It is true to say that consideration is also applied to other forms of business income like sales commissions, leasing fees and the like. Sometimes there are values attributable to these income streams to form an overall sale price for the business.

What real estate business owners need to do is start to think outside the square and set processes in place to ensure other forms of regular income flow into the business.

If you were to ask a business owner what these other income streams might be, many would pick the obvious ones like, commissions paid for acting as a buyers’ agent, income from mortgage referrals and even the income derived from referring ingoing tenants connecting utility services paid by a utility connections company, however, I would like to suggest there is even another one that is easy to obtain and is under the nose of all real estate businesses. It’s Utility Bill Reviews!

Prop Tech company Movinghub as an example has the technology and workflow processes within their platform to tailor a solution for any business so they can obtain the referral fees paid from a client of theirs doing an energy bill comparison and switching.

Just imagine the reach any real estate business has when it comes to their customers. All of their past and present sellers, buyers, landlords, tenants, prospective tenants, prospective buyers, potential sellers, potential landlords.... the list goes on. Any of these people at some point in time may consider comparing what they are paying for electricity and gas and many of them will move to another provider even it provides a small saving. In these cases not only does the consumer win here but also does the estate agent who ultimately offered the service to their customer.

The technology now enables a consumer to access the likes of Movinghub’s bill review comparison site and within a short moment of analysing a customer’s current bill a comparison is offered against other energy providers and it displays the saving. An advantage to using this leading technology is the opportunity to enhance the estate agent's core service offering to its customers, going above and beyond and keeping that relationship connection over time. Clients will always then be assured of being on the most competitive rates in the marketplace which could potentially save them not just hundreds, but thousands of dollars over time. This service can also be offered to commercial clients.

This not only saves the consumer money, but it places the real estate brand at the forefront of the customer’s mind as being the one who recommended the no-obligation free comparison. This pays off in multiple ways for the real estate business owner. It’s another way of keeping in touch with their client base, helping their clients and it provides regular income to the business.

With appropriate systems and processes in place, there is a genuine opportunity to obtain a new and valuable level of income with very little work and attention to it. You never know, maybe all this additional revenue might make the real estate business more valuable when it comes to selling, or at the very least, more appealing to a buyer. In the meantime it provides additional and regular income for the business.

With the speed and development of technology, many business processes and additional revenue streams are thought to be either too hard to chase or will take too much time to achieve, when in fact they can be extremely easy to put in place.

If any business owner does the numbers the income from this service can be substantial. You never know this could also set that business apart from its competitors in more ways than one.

To find out more about Movinghub please contact us or visit our movinghub.io

Learn how the bill review technology works

Written by Geoff White – Head of Real Estate at Movinghub Australia and former REIV President (Movinghub.com.au)

Related reading:

Unity amongst Estate Agents is the way forward

Selling, Buying and Moving can be frustrating: Movinghub

Movinghub – Prop Tech for estate agents