You’re thinking of selling your home in Texas in the coming months. It's likely you've heard of a few new options which promise to make home selling simpler and cheaper for you. You’ve heard of Jovio and you’ve likely heard of REX. While we welcome the change that REX is bringing, we don’t believe their model best serves all home sellers. We want to provide transparency (on both services!) so you can make the best decision to reach your goals. Below we’ll dive into key tactics of home selling and where Jovio and REX differ.

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1. Using Modern and Traditional Marketing to Sell Your Home

Jovio agents leverage modern marketing to ensure your property reaches and stays top of mind with the right potential buyers. Our agents leverage practices such as custom online audience curation, remarketing campaigns, AI, and other secret sauces to ensure your property reaches and continues to follow prospective buyers. REX claims to use similar modern tactics, though we’re unable to confirm this, and it is one of their main selling points. After all, 51% of buyers have found the home they purchased through the Internet. Modern tactics make sense, but there’s more to the puzzle…

Where Jovio agents differ from REX is in leveraging more “traditional” marketing tactics to supplement the more modern approaches. For example, all Jovio properties are listed on Realtor.com, AustinHomeSearch.com, Redfin.com, and many other websites that home buyers in the Austin area use in their home search. REX does not advertise its properties as “for sale” on these networks. In fact, a home that’s for sale with REX may even be listed as “Off Market” - yikes! Even if a homeowner asks to have their house listed on these sites, REX will be unable to do so because many of their Texas-based agents are not REALTORS®.

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2. The REALTOR® and MLS Advantage

Jovio is a proud member of the National Association of REALTORS®, Texas Association of REALTORS®, and both Austin Board of REALTORS® and San Antonio Board of REALTORS®. Membership yields many benefits to our agent's clients which we’ve listed below:

1. Jovio listings are pro-actively marketed to all REALTORS® in the greater Austin area and their clients. Every time our agents list a property for sale, they receive statistics on the 100s of clients that viewed the listing on MLS portals set up by other cooperating REALTORS®. This enables Jovio agents and their clients to leverage a powerful network of cooperating REALTORS® and buyers and further get a pulse on the real estate market.
2. Only REALTORS® can submit listings to the MLS. Think of the MLS as the source of all inventory of homes available for sale. The MLS then syndicates, or sends, this data to popular real estate portal websites like Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, Redfin.com, HomeSnap.com, in addition to all local real estate websites with an IDX feed (such as Keller Williams and Realty Austin). Unfortunately, REX properties are not found on the aforementioned websites with the exception of Zillow (and Trulia which is owned by Zillow). These websites receive tens of millions of visits per month – a necessary medium for home sellers (and their broker) to advertise on. 95% of those searching for a new home go online…your home should cover every inch of the Internet.
3. The Texas Association of REALTORS® grants access to tried and true real estate forms that are only available to members. These are continuously reviewed and modified by legal counsel and are a common form of communication and transaction among REALTORS® in Texas. Since Jovio has full access to these, we caution home sellers who consider using REX to seek legal counsel to review the forms and contracts used in their transaction to ensure legality and protection.
4. Since Texas is a non-disclosure state, only members and participants have access to the data that all agents share with the MLS. This means that non-members, like REX, cannot legally access information regarding the sale prices of homes - something that's crucial in making sure that your home is competitively and accurately priced.

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3. A Look into Transparent AND Equitable Pricing

At the end of the day, what it will cost is an important piece for you, right? In the spirit of transparency, let’s take this head to head:

Jovio agents offer everything from professional photography to pricing strategy. Often a cooperating agent (the buyer’s agent) is involved in a transaction, and they will need to be compensated for their time and efforts. It is common for home sellers to cover this cost by offering a 2 to 3% cooperating agent commission, which is reflected in a higher listing and sale price. This is preferred by buyers because it means they don’t have any additional out-of-pocket costs (i.e. paying a $10,000 commission to their agent).

With REX, the buyer will be responsible for paying their agent’s commission which affects the amount of money they have for the down payment and closing costs. This will render many prospective homebuyers unqualified and yield a less favorable and lower sales price for homeowners selling with REX. Also, 87% of buyers typically purchase their home through an agent. You really don’t want to deter 87% of the potential buyers from seeing your home, do you? REX’s pricing model is translucent at best and is more of a left-pocket vs. right-pocket game, which doesn’t benefit home buyers or home sellers. But we’ll give them credit – it does attract attention from a marketing standpoint!

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4. Home-field Advantage Matters

REX is an LA-based company looking to expand into hot markets like Texas. Since you live in Texas, you know this is not LA. Real estate is hyperlocal and different in every region of the United States.

Having a local expert that understands the market is extremely important. Jovio only hires agents with a strong track record and understanding of markets in Texas. Jovio agents understand Texas and the importance of cooperating with the community of brokerages and agents in town to ensure your property sells quicker and for more money.

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In Summary, the Choice is Simple:

From supercharged digital and traditional marketing to local market expertise, these advantages empower Jovio agents to sell their client’s homes 4x faster on average compared to our competitors. Often, we have properties under contract while they are still “coming soon.”