Realtor.com Partners with Digital Closing Unicorn Qualia

The American property portal Realtor.com has announced that is has entered a partnership with the online closing company Qualia to provide agents with options to digitally manage paperwork associated with US property transactions.

Founded in the Bay Area in 2015, Qualia is an online real estate transaction services company which recently hit a $1 billion valuation off the back of a Series D funding round led by existing investors Tiger Global. By partnering with Qualia, Realtor is acting on what it says is an increasing demand among its end-users for online solutions and aiming to bring the title and notarization process a step further down the road to full digitization.

The partnership announced yesterday between the News Corp-backed portal and the PropTech unicorn will give the 150,000 agents who participate in Realtor's ReadyConnect Concierge program a choice of title companies that work with Qualia via Realtor's ReadyConnect agent app. Agents will also be able to invite title companies they may already work with to become part of the Qualia network

Much like the recent announcement that Realtor agents would be given access to several 3d tour suppliers, the decision to work with Qualia seems to have been borne out of a desire to give as much choice as possible to agents. Speaking to inman.com, Realtor Chief Revenue Officer Ben Rubenstein emphasized this point:

"What I love about Qualia is they’re not trying to replace the title company, they say, ‘there are all these amazing title companies out there, let’s empower them.’ That is something we at realtor.com are trying to do as well. We’re not trying to replace agents, we’re trying to empower agents."

The latest move by the California-based portal company is only the latest in a series of strategic partnerships, initiatives and mergers to shift the company's outlook towards a more full service real estate product for its users. As recently as December the portal announced its purchase of DIY rentals company Avail and before that a partnership with Rocket Mortgage to benefit its ReadyConnect Concierge agents.