Beagel’s custom offer management is more than it promises: Tech Review

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Beagel is an enterprise white-labeled offer submission and management solution

Platforms: Browser
Ideal for: Agents, teams and brokerages

Top selling points:

• Integrated open offer platform
• Fully customizable solutions
• Flexible CRM/existing-tool integrations
• Agent-centric
• Consistent buyer engagement

Top concern

Beagel is coming into the U.S. with a solid track record of success in European markets. There is real potential here, and overall, it’s a positive move for the domestic industry, but it will require time for the company to develop inroads and compete with established proptechs.

What you should know

Beagel doesn’t really want you to know who they are. In other words, the company provides a fully branded back-end sales solution that is invisible to the outside user. In short, the company aims to be a deeply integrated software partner leading with an in-browser, open-offer solution that allows buyers to bid on homes and agents to manage the process.

The backend allows for the creation of groups, or teams, management of individual offices from a central admin, individual agent profiles, and control of a widely flexible customer-facing offer submission and management module. Beagel is able to match any existing UI and UX and blend smoothly with company best practices and other technology vendors, as well as scale across large operations.

Beagel is founded by a team with a history in real estate and technology, so its expertise in overlapping software with real estate business is sound, and what’s offered here makes that clear. It’s tough to call Beagel a stand-alone product, but it does rest its value proposition on an offer-submission system that can be launched from any brokerage’s listing pages or individual property websites and landing pages connected to marketing campaigns.

If you’ve read my column over time, you’ll know that I’m no advocate of the traditional closed-offer ecosystem. It is of no advantage to the seller to not broadcast the details of existing offers, outside of the personal information of the buyer.

A number of open-offer solutions have entered the market, but real traction has been difficult. I believe it’s simply because agents aren’t able to break free from what they know. SparkOffer and Doorsey are chugging along, and Australia’s MarketBuy made its formal U.S. debut in 2022.

I’m a fan of each of the above options, as well as Zavvie and Zoodealio, which offer offer-comparison tools for the seller, allowing the agent to show how private and institutional investors, the traditional market and iBuyers compete for a seller’s home.

What is unique about Beagel is how its method of delivery, in essence disappearing behind the brokerage’s CMS, executing on its promises through code tightly woven into a website’s backend. When submitting an offer, buyers need to create an account and get confirmed as an able prospect. Beagel’s process ensures the registration of buyer agents, as well.

Once qualified, a buyer is able to access the detailed listing page and enter a bid, as well as see the timestamps and amounts of other offers. A registered buyer doesn’t necessarily have to act on a home, they can also join a property’s watch list, something I suspect would enthrall local Nextdoor users.

As bids are entered, all relevant stakeholders are notified via an alert system, and the agent’s dashboard starts tracking activity. It’s in that interface where agents can manage their listings and offer histories, view total bid amounts, edit their profiles, and look into their registered buyers.

Public offer displays gives sellers another option, and it’s a powerful argument in a listing presentation. It’s a way to entice offers at all times of the day, create more competition and speed up responses to expedite negotiation.

Beagel also provides system-wide activity reports, brokerage-level permissions, and an extensive list of API docs for partner developers to use when working alongside Beagle to, as its founder put it, “beat it like a stolen horse.”

His point is that the company wants its software tested. Bend it, pull it, throw it on the floor. In short, challenge Beagel to make its offer system work within the confines of what you’re doing already. This could mean synchronizing existing CRM records with registered buyer status and creating new fields in it when they bid on a house or join a watchlist.

Accepted offers, for example, could feed directly into any transaction management solution a brokerage has installed. This is what software is supposed to do, challenge the way you do things to make it better.

A good reason to work with a custom developer, among many, is that the end result can become a competitive advantage. You’ll have something your competitors don’t. Again, I think MarketBuy, Doorsey and the rest in that category are on to something, but they don’t blend as easily into your entire operation. Beagel is also set with clear fixed costs per implementation, not a common characteristic among the software engineering ilk. Costs will vary based on the size of your operation, of course.

The software is rounded out with a number of reporting tools, administrative controls, and buyer and seller communication tools.

Know that this isn’t a plug-and-play partnership scenario. Nor should it be. This will take more time to build, and the upfront legwork will require internal champions. But in truth, every software install should.

Beagel told me it’ll be announcing a couple of U.S.-based partners soon, and that its formal launch here will come sometime in Q2. I’ll be excited to see how those relationships evolve. I’m torn on the ranking, merely because I want to see the results after Beagel’s customers get the chance to, well, beat it up a little.

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 with technology decisions and marketing through reviewing software and tech for Inman.