Ben Kinney

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Ben Kinney
Occupation(s)Entrepreneur
Professional speaker
Author
Executive
Real estate agent

Ben Kinney is an entrepreneur, professional speaker, author, real estate agent, [1] brokerage owner, and co-founder of PLACE, Inc. that started in Bellingham, Washington and now operates across the U.S., Canada, and the U.K . [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]

Contents

He is listed in The Wall Street Journal and REAL Trends' top 1,000 agents from 2011 to 2022. [10] [11] [12] [13] He was the top ranked agent in Washington state in transactional volume from 2012 to 2021. [11] [12]

Kinney is the founder of Ben Kinney Companies commonly referred to as "BKCO" which owns and operates the sales divisions, brokerages, training companies, and the technology firms including NVNTD, Blueroof360, Activerain, Automabots, Brivity, and Blossor. [6] [7] [14] [15]

In 2013, NVNTD purchased Big Fresh Media and Tech Help. In 2015 BKCO purchased KWKLY and Activerain from the Zillow Group. In 2017 BKCO acquired the Salt Lake City technology company Blueroof360 and in August, 2017 they also acquired the San Diego–based AI company, Automabots. [6]

In 2019, Kinney along with Chris Suarez, co-founded the real estate technology platform, Place. In 2021 Goldman Sachs along with 3L invested 100 million dollars into PLACE at over one billion dollars valuation. [16] [17]

Early life

Kinney was born in Everett, Washington, on July 24, 1978. He was the second born child to Dorothy Louise Stine and Michael Byron Kinney. He was raised in a small cabin without indoor plumbing or power in Oso, between Bellingham and Bellingham by his father, Mike Kinney, who was a fly fishing guide and wildlife photographer. [4] Kinney graduated from Granite Falls High School in 1997 before obtaining a two year associate's degree from Everett Community College. While completing his four year degree at Western Washington University he worked as a cable television installer. [4] He later transitioned into the door to door sales of cable television, telephone and internet services before starting his career in real estate in 2004. [4] In addition to his work in real estate, Kinney is also an entrepreneur and has started several successful businesses. In 2007, he founded ActiveRain, a social networking site for real estate professionals. The site quickly grew in popularity and was acquired by Trulia in 2013.

Kinney has also founded several other companies, including Brivity, which provides software for real estate agents, and Blossor, a health and wellness company.

Today, Kinney is known as one of the top real estate agents in the country, having sold over 5,000 homes throughout his career. He is also recognized as a thought leader in the industry and is a sought-after speaker at conferences and events.

Despite his success, Kinney remains grounded and committed to helping others achieve their goals. [18]

Career

Kinney became a full-time real estate agent in 2004. [4] Kinney later developed the curriculum for an online real estate designation course named IMSD - Internet Marketing Specialist Designation. [19] He sold the curriculum to MarketLeader a publicly traded company acquired by Trulia, but continued to teach classes through the brands Ben Kinney Training, Re8Expo, and Raincamp.

Kinney created two real estate tech startups, Brivity and Blossor. [19] [20] He was named the 2014 Innovator of the Year by Inman News . [21]

On June 19, 2015, Zillow Group Announced the Sale of ActiveRain and KWKLY to the Ben Kinney Companies. [22]

Publications

Kinney co-authored Soci@l, an ebook published by Rellek Publishing Partners, with Jay Papasan. [3] [23] Soci@l won a bronze award at the 2011 National Association of Real Estate Editors competition. [23]

Related Research Articles

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For sale by owner (FSBO) is the process of selling real estate without the representation of a broker or agent. This is where the homeowner sells directly to a new homeowner. Homeowners may still employ the services of marketing, online listing companies, but can also market their own property.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zillow</span> American real estate website

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Redfin</span> Real estate brokerage

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Move, Inc. is a real estate listing company based in Santa Clara, California. The company operates the Move Network of real estate websites, the largest of which is Realtor.com. Move has a longstanding partnership with the National Association of Realtors, the real estate industry's largest trade association, for operating Realtor.com.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stefan Swanepoel</span> American businessman

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An electronic version of the real estate industry, Internet real estate is the concept of publishing housing estates for sale or rent online, and for consumers seeking to buy or rent properties through such platforms. Often, Internet real estate properties are listed and managed by landlords themselves. However, there are few exceptions where an online real estate agent would exist, still dealing via the World Wide Web and often stating a flat fee and not a commission based on the percentage of total sales. Internet real estate platforms surfaced around 1999 when technology advanced and statistics prove that more than 1 million homes were sold by the owners themselves in the United States alone in 2000. Some of the primary Internet real estate platforms include Zillow, Trulia, Yahoo! Real Estate, Redfin and Realtor.com.

A real estate trend is any consistent pattern or change in the general direction of the real estate industry which, over the course of time, causes a statistically noticeable change. This phenomenon can be a result of the economy, a change in mortgage rates, consumer speculations, or other fundamental and non-fundamental reasons.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Keller Williams Realty</span> American real estate franchise headquartered in Austin Texas

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vFlyer, Inc., operator of the vFlyer.com website, is a Web 2.0 company founded by Aaron Sperling and Oliver Muoto in 2004 and is based in San Francisco, California. The company enables online sellers and sales professionals to syndicate and distribute their product or service listings to online marketplaces that include Oodle, Vast.com, Google Base, Trulia, Craigslist, HotPads.com, Yahoo! Classifieds, eBay Classifieds, and others.

Cyberhomes is a real estate website owned by Fidelity National Financial and Lender Processing Services (LPS). It lists the most current sales of homes in a neighborhood by similar sales.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Realtor.com</span> Real estate website

Realtor.com is a real estate listings website operated by the News Corp subsidiary Move, Inc. and based in Santa Clara, California. It is the second most visited real estate listings website in the United States as of 2021, with over 100 million monthly active users.

Trulia is an American online real estate marketplace which is a subsidiary of Zillow. It facilitates buyers and renters to find homes and neighborhoods across the United States through recommendations, local insights, and map overlays that offer details on commute, schools, churches and nearby businesses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Naked Apartments</span>

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Smarter Agent, Inc. was a research and development company, founded by Brad W. Blumberg and Eric M. Blumberg, that built early mobile location-based apps.

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Ben Caballero is an American entrepreneur, real estate professional, founder and CEO of HomesUSA.com. He holds the record in the Guinness World Records for real estate sales. In 2015 Caballero became the first real estate professional to exceed USD $1 billion in home sales in a single year. In 2018 he became the first real estate professional to exceed $2 billion in home sales in a single year, a threshold he surpassed again in 2019 and 2020. Between 2004 and 2021, Caballero was the real estate agent of record for approximately 48,000 property sales and $17 billion in cumulative transaction volume.

Opendoor Technologies Inc. is an online company that buys and sells residential real estate. Headquartered in San Francisco, it makes instant cash offers on homes through an online process, makes repairs on the properties it purchases and relists them for sale. It also provides mobile application-based home buying services along with financing. As of November 2021, the company operates in 44 markets in the US.

References

  1. ↑ "Top US Real Estate Agents - DW Home". 2024-03-09. Retrieved 2024-03-09.
  2. ↑ Lawrence Cole (October 28, 2013). "Award-winning Realtor uses social media and technology to drive sales". Washington Times Communities. Retrieved October 29, 2013.
  3. 1 2 Lauren Beale (Jun 16, 2011). "More real estate agents turning to social media". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved Oct 16, 2013.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 "30 Under 30". Realtor Magazine. Retrieved Oct 16, 2013.
  5. ↑ Marco Pineda. "How to Sell My Houses in Dalla". Dallas Houses for Cash. Retrieved Aug 27, 2020.
  6. 1 2 3 Evan Marczynski (Dec 17, 2012). "With new parent firm, Big Fresh Media expands into digital realm". Bellingham Business Journal. Retrieved Oct 16, 2013.
  7. 1 2 "Business Pulse Magazine". Fall 2012. Retrieved Oct 16, 2013.
  8. ↑ "Building for the Future". RISMedia. Retrieved Oct 16, 2013.
  9. ↑ Chris Smith (Dec 9, 2011). "Ben Kinney Shares His Secret Sauce: The Business Model Of The Future Is Already Here". inman News. Retrieved Oct 16, 2013.
  10. 1 2 "REAL Trends 2012 Top Sales Professionals". REAL Trends The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on June 27, 2012. Retrieved Oct 16, 2013.
  11. ↑ "REAL Trends 2013 Top Sales Professionals". REAL Trends. Archived from the original on 2011-08-01. Retrieved 2014-06-30.
  12. ↑ "100 Most Influential Real Estate Leaders: 2011" (PDF). inman News. Archived from the original (PDF) on October 21, 2013. Retrieved Oct 16, 2013.
  13. ↑ Teke Wiggin (2014-06-19). "Brivity helps agents show clients what they've done to earn their commission". inMan News. Retrieved 2014-06-30.
  14. ↑ Mary Ann Azevedo (2021-11-17). "Profitable proptech Place raises $100M at a $1B valuation as Goldman Sachs leads its first round of funding". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2021-11-17.
  15. ↑ Todd Bishop (2021-11-17). "Real estate startup Place comes out of nowhere with $100M round, led by Goldman at $1B valuation". Geekwire. Retrieved 2021-11-17.
  16. ↑ Ben kinney net worth
  17. 1 2 "In Blossor & Brivity, Ben Kinney Reinvents Home Selling in the Social Media Era". Seattle 24x7. 26 May 2014. Retrieved 2014-06-30.
  18. ↑ Wiggin, Teke (2014-06-30). "'Zillow-killer' Blossor out to conquer natural language search". Inman News. Retrieved 2014-06-07.
  19. ↑ "Announcing: 2014 Innovator Awards winners". Inman News. 16 July 2014. Retrieved 25 July 2014.
  20. ↑ "Zillow Group Announces Sale of ActiveRain to the Ben Kinney Companies".
  21. 1 2 "Inman News writers win 5 awards". Inman News. Retrieved Oct 16, 2013.

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