Zoocasa, the Rogers-owned brokerage that began life as a controversial web portal that was successfully sued by Century 21 for scraping listings from its website, and evolved into a referral network of agents, is being shut down.
In a statement, the company says, “Rogers has made the decision to no longer to continue our investment in Zoocasa as the business is no longer a fit with our overall company plan, and core areas of focus. We will close down our website and mobile app effective June 22nd, 2015.”
In a REM story in January, broker of record Darryl Mitchell said, “The misconceptions about Zoocasa from some Realtors are plentiful,” adding that the belief among some real estate professionals that Zoocasa is anti-Realtor or competition for salespeople is completely false.
“We believe that there are many qualified agents working at credible brokerages across the country,” says Mitchell. “Zoocasa’s services are intended to complement an agent’s and brokerage’s current business through referrals. We see our model as being very much a performance-based marketing opportunity for qualified, high-performing, customer-service-focused agents who are looking for ways to grow their business.”
In an email to customers, Zoocasa wrote: “We have had the pleasure of matching thousands of customers like you with great Realtors throughout the country. As a result of your support, Zoocasa has grown into a unique business in a traditional space. Although we have had great success, we have made the difficult decision to close down our business.”
Watch REM for more about this story.
