Tether RE is a mobile app for helping real estate agents stay safe conducting showings, open houses and other activities with strangers.
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Tether RE is a safety app for agents.
Platforms: Mobile
Ideal for: All agents
Top selling points:
- Redundancy: four lines of defense
- Uses vetted call centers
- Buyer-client authentication
- Struggle detection
Top concerns:
I’m anxious about the app’s developers weighing down the value proposition with ancillary features.
What you should know
Tether RE is another option for mobile phone-based agent safety. It has a number of smart features that are simple to activate, redundant and marry the software with native features of most mobile phones, such as their GPS chips and accelerometers. Its feature set is easy to set up and activate to ensure a user is fumbling around with it before a showing starts.
Tether RE offers four tiers of protection, the first being verification of the person being met at the property.
It can identify pre-paid phones and does a reverse lookup to match the number with the person or business, connect them with any recent market activity to help ensure they’re a true lead and also verify the property’s ownership history. While tax records and other public records access providers can do that, it makes very good sense to have it part of the safety process to avoid skipping what could be a crucial verifier. This can all be done before you ever leave the office.
The second form of protection is a simple panic button that boldly sits ready to go on the phone’s screen. Activating it will alert pre-connected emergency contacts and a 24-hour call center that can dispatch local authorities.
Tether RE also deploys activity timers that require a pin to cancel, with reminders to do so prior to the countdown ending. Should it culminate without the pin, the call center is alerted. There’s also a second type of pin, one that would signal the user is under duress, a sort of clever way to hide from an assailant that you’ve called for help. Nice touch.
The app also integrates with the same onboard features most phones today use to detect any immediate physical action that could be characteristic of a fall or struggle. Should the app think you’ve been hit or suffered sudden impact, it’ll notify the call center.
Another unique component of the software is its ability to “tether” a buyer to an agent when visiting a property without them. This allows a connected agent to physically monitor their client while looking at homes on their own, enabling real-time messaging and feedback, too. This can also be used when buyers are following their agent in their own car during a tour or need to find them later in the day.
Where Tether RE lost a little of my attention — great intentions notwithstanding — is when it tries to emulate more business-critical mobile applications with showing scheduling, mileage and expense tracking, and its Zapier-linked CRM integrations.
I don’t think any agent expects their safety app to also excel at keeping in touch with clients after a showing, so I wasn’t sure why Tether RE didn’t peruse the market on what already exists in this category, such as Lofty’s Closely, Cloze and Follow Up Boss, for starters.
Instead of trying to match what these notable players already do, make those apps onboard Tether RE’s functionality; put the onus of safety on the software companies helping agents get showings. Make safety intrinsic to lead generation.
Why try to dislodge that cornerstone of the market? Instead, use it to anchor your application.
There aren’t too many mobile applications out there to help agents stay safe in the field. The very nature of the industry’s overly competitive, “get business at all costs” structure is largely to blame.
Agents have been victims far too many times in open houses, vacant homes, shady land deals and crumbling apartment buildings. It’s all too easy for bad apples to prey on colleagues, friends and family members, and not nearly enough attention is paid to the risk because, dammit, the commission matters.
Here are some recent stats, and they’re pretty surprising.
If this app isn’t the one for you, then please consider either another piece of technology or some other form of reliable personal protection. The good news is that you already own your best safety device, and it’s always going to tell you the right thing to do, so go with your gut.
If it doesn’t feel right, it isn’t. The commission can wait.
Have a technology product you would like to discuss? Email Craig Rowe
Craig C. Rowe started in commercial real estate at the dawn of the dot-com boom, helping an array of commercial real estate companies fortify their online presence and analyze internal software decisions. He now helps agents and proptechs with technology and partnership decisions and lends his expertise to Inman to review and report on the people and products inciting industry change.
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