IRVINE, CA – First Team Real Estate is making strategic moves within the tech space to not only keep up with the ever-changing landscape but also continue to position the company at the forefront of new advancements with the appointments of Steven McCloskey as Chief Product Officer and Jim Loges as Director of IT Operations.
The real estate industry has increasingly experienced disruption from new technologies and systems and recent developments in digital marketing regulations are impacting the lives of real estate agents and their clients every single day. Thanks to the vision and innovation of the company’s new technology leaders, First Team and its agents are primed to continue dominating the Southern California marketplace.![#1 Independent Brokerage in Southern California[1] remains at the forefront of technology, with a new Chief Product Officer and Director of IT Operations.](https://assets.luxuryrealestate.com/lre-assets/images/versions/image_browser/w1280h960_nc/000/000/029/809/1573151810.png "#1 Independent Brokerage in Southern California[1] remains at the forefront of technology, with a new Chief Product Officer and Director of IT Operations.")
Having worked at Morgan Stanley and for creative companies such as Paramount Pictures, Steven brings a creative-analytics approach to product development and implementation in his new role. In his time with the company, he has propelled First Team forward, building the new RoadMap-AI™ digital advertising platform, powered by an inventive lead distribution software, completely phone application free.
“The future of enhancing the buyer experience will be driven by reducing the amount of time it takes to find the right home. The average buyer spends 124 hours looking for a home online [2] and it’s my job to cut that time down to under eight hours,” stated Steven. “At every step, we’re continuing to streamline, increase lead quality and improve how our agents can connect, communicate and incubate serious buyers. Less is truly more.”
First Team is tackling the biggest problems in real estate with creative solutions. Through the process of continually advancing real estate tech, they are creating proprietary recipes for providing tangible value to buyers in their home search process. Steven is also building out first of kind tools such as; Rich Communication Services (RCS) for lead generation and IDX bots with AI for search enhancement. The buyer journey is a reflection of not only the public-facing tools a brokerage offers but also of the back-end agent support a brokerage equips its agents with and this is why Steven is connecting all end-points by creating a first of kind system that integrates: CMA’s, accounting reports, buyer graphs and marketing KPI’s to better understand the buyer journey while equipping agents with the data necessary to close deals faster and easier.
Jim has the same vision for First Team agents when it comes to providing the support and education necessary to succeed in the industry today. “Technology is easy, humans are much more complicated,” said Jim. “With a focus-driven execution strategy in place, we’re creating a more responsive and effective help desk solution so that our agents can spend their time putting clients first.”
With a total of 28 years with the company, Jim is uniquely equipped to infuse the company’s core values with industry-standard models to increase efficiency and deliver ever higher customer satisfaction ratings. “Increasingly sophisticated phishing attacks and identity threats are a fact. But with our heightened security and technologies, our agents will be prepared to counter and overcome anything that comes their way,” states Jim.
“First Team Real Estate has long been the leader in Southern California, and now that we have the inventive technological minds of Jim and Steven working together with our executive leadership team, we’re stronger than ever,” adds Cameron Merage, founder and CEO of First Team.
Following the company’s 43-year tradition of putting agents, and the clients they serve first, these new appointments strengthen the core values of teamwork, innovation and quality. Leading the local Southern California market in transactions as well as the national market in tech advances, First Team Real Estate is a brokerage to keep your eye on.
[1] Top broker report published in January 2019 based on data available from 7/1/2001-12/31/2018, all CRMLS, all brokers.
[2] “Would You Buy a Home if it Cost You $32,116 per Minute to View?” zolo.ca (May 7, 2019)