Fathom CEO on why the virtual real estate model works

Today’s HousingWire Daily features a crossover episode with RealTrending. In this episode, Tracey Velt, editorial director at HW Media Company RealTrends, interviews the CEO and founder of Fathom Holdings, Josh Harley.

During the interview, Harley discussed Fathom’s recent growth and its going public over the past year, as well as plans to create a comparable industry-friendly service like Zillow. Additionally, he shared his thoughts on some of the biggest misconceptions surrounding Fathom’s virtual business model. 

Here is a small preview of the interview, which has been lightly edited for length and clarity:

Tracey Velt: You mentioned that you are building a national real estate portal. Are you competing with Zillow?

Josh Harley: We want to service the whole industry. Fathom’s technology allows us to do more with less by automating many of the processes. It allows us to operate completely virtually, requires fewer personnel on staff. There are a lot of companies who need what we have to offer. In fact, we already have over 400 brokers paying us for our technology or data. We believe that we can help other brokerages reduce their costs and build more profitable business as well. 

As you indicated long term, we do plan to roll out a national search portal to generate leads for our agents in the markets that Fathom services, but also to generate leads for other agents in the markets that we’re not in yet. So we’re using our data from LiveBy to compete against those companies that, let’s be honest, have a long-term goal to put us out of business. If you’re going to buy leads, buy them from a company who wants to help you stay relevant and not see your demise.

HousingWire Daily examines the most compelling articles reported across HW Media. Each afternoon, we provide our listeners with a deeper look into the stories coming across our newsrooms that are helping Move Markets Forward. Hosted by the HW team and produced by Alcynna Lloyd and Elissa Branch. If you have a pitch or an inquiry relating to podcasts, you can reach our team at [email protected].