Photo courtesy of Infinityy
Lisa Nickerson
CEO, Infinityy
Industry experience: 33 years
Age: 52
Realtor groups have a vested interest in exposing their listings to a wide audience while maximizing fast connections between brokers and buyers. One platform, Boston-based Infinityy, has built AI-powered software that enhances residential property listings with multilingual capabilities, offers guided virtual tours and provides data to brokers on what drives clicks. Lisa Nickerson, owner of Nickerson public relations and marketing agency, joined Infinityy in 2021 and was recently named its CEO as it pursues growth opportunities. It landed its first big client last spring in the Miami Association of Realtors, which will make the Infinityy platform available to its 60,000 members.
Q: How has the Infinityy platform evolved to meet the needs of the marketplace?
A: I joined them during COVID, and it was an office product that got a little stalled, so we pivoted to a multifamily product. The founder, Jim Schoonmaker, has years of experience in understanding space and place, and he created a product that I thought was really terrific. But considering where the market was, I brought my real estate expertise in, and we pivoted the product for multifamily.
This was originally going to be virtual office tours, and Avison Young and CBRE in other markets were utilizing it. But when the market stopped we pivoted to multifamily and we got some great traction, originally particularly with Mike Boujoulian with Alliance Residential and Mike Procopio. And that’s when Second Century Ventures – which is the venture arm of NAR they have an accelerator program and they invested. We were one of seven companies chosen for multifamily, and that really helped change the directory of the company.
At that time, they said to us, “You know, this would make a really great single-family tool,” and we got such quick traction and immediate interest from MLS and from the residential side that we further pivoted the product. We won the Miami MLS [contract] and then it was time to really turn this from a product into growth and acceleration. And that’s when I decided to take the CEO role.
Q: Does this change your role at Nickerson?
A: I’ll still remain the CEO of Nickerson. I still own the agency, but the senior leadership team – Molly Silvia, Shannon Miller, Joseph Soto – have taken on additional responsibilities of really running the agency, and they’ll report to me. But I’ve been working on Infinityy for a few years now, and I am formally going to be putting my effort there.
Q: How does the platform enhance online listings?
A: It’s a lot more than just a virtual tour, which is why it works. It has an AI agent that allows somebody to ask questions about the property, and then it also has a feature where they can text directly to a leasing agent from the platform or jump in in a Zoom-like experience also. So, if you were looking at an apartment building and I was the leasing agent, we could virtually go through this property together at the same time. And that’s something nobody has: that collaboration piece, and also what I call meeting people where they are.
Q: How does this fit into the single-family market?
A: We’re partnering with the MLS. Miami was the first; they’re the fifth-largest MLS in the country. So, when a new listing comes up in the MLS, they get an email from us letting them know that their Infinityy listing is ready, and if they choose to use it, it goes up into their virtual tour link, and people can immediately go to that instead of the regular listing. Because of all the capabilities, instead of flipping through 60 pictures, for example, you could say, “Show me the bedrooms,” taking you directly to things. It also ties directly into Google Street View.
If I think back to my 30-plus years of real estate, starting as a rental agent when I was at Boston College, to commercial brokerage in the late 1990s and early 2000s, to owning a residential brokerage at one point, we’re always trying to not just showcase a property, but how a property will work for somebody. Where does it fit as a place, in a neighborhood? You can also ask the AI: Where is the closest gym? Where is the closest elementary school? It’s not opening up a separate window.
It’s all right in that one platform, and that information is summarized for the agent or for the leasing agent also. So, as they’re following up with you, they know what you’re looking for already. It being AI, it’s also multilingual. For people whose English isn’t their first language, they can ask all those questions in any language, but the listing can be written in English.
Q: How does the business model work?
A: Each MLS works a little differently, and so the way our contracts are looking are really dependent on the MLS. The basic model is: We partner with the MLS, and through that partnership, they have a premium model that allows them to use it and have basic editing tools. If they’d like to have advanced editing, if they’d like to be able to create social posts directly from it and build campaigns, really track their data, have reports for their sellers, then they can upgrade to a pro version. Or we have what’s called a power user, and that’s somebody who either owns a brokerage or leads a team, so they can look at the success of their team. And so they tier as a [software-as-a-subscription] model in that.
Q: What data does the platform gather? And how does it analyze it and report it back to agents?
A: It gives a full transcript of where you went in the product. If you were asking about the kitchens, you were asking about the bedrooms, you were asking about the elementary school, you’re asking where to walk your dog. You can either look at it from a step by step of everything you asked and went to in order. It provides that on the back end, but it also provides them just a summary of what you were asking for. So again, by the time somebody calls you back, they might say, “Steve, we know you were looking at 131 Main St., and your interests are here. Not only is that a great property, I already have three others I’d like to show you to consider,” because they already know what you’re looking at.
Q: Is your growth strategy focused on MLS?
A: The core client growth here is in the MLSs across the country. There are over 530 MLSs right now, but the top 20 manage 60 percent of the market. So right now, we’re focused primarily on the top 20. And again, Miami is number five. So, we’re off to a good start, right?
Nickerson’s Favorite Health and Wellness Go-Tos
- Whoop
- com
- Training Peaks
- TB12 Training
- Blueprint by Bryan Johnson
