Just before the COVID-19 pandemic, app developer Matthew Snowden put his Melbourne apartment on the market.
He sold it the old-fashioned way.
But his frustration with the way properties are marketed, he said, led to an idea for a free social network app for real estate. Known as 1060 (ten sixty), users can scroll through an endless stream of properties in short-form videos designed to be social and entertaining.
They can follow and chat with agents.
Moreover, the agents and agencies who post these mini-movies with music are vetted and manually approved to keep out bots and ensure the active listings’ legitimacy. And because the app is a self-serve model, once a property is no longer available, its creators can either archive or delete the corresponding video.
Users can search by property, price, agents, agencies and keywords in the city of choice. Videos can also be shared across different social network channels. In California, The Oppenheim Group co-founder Jason Oppenheim of Netflix’s “Selling Sunset” and “Selling the OC” fame has joined 1060.
Luxury agents Herman Chan of Golden Gate Sotheby’s International Realty, Craig Knizek of The Agency and Georgina Jacobson Group at Coldwell Banker Realty are also among the dozens from across the United States that have also joined.
1060 arrives in the aftermath of the real estate videos that popped up when stay-at-home mandates pushed open houses to a halt.
“You had this explosion of people buying property sight unseen,” said Snowden, who believes “buyers will make 97% of their choices without visiting a property just by watching a video on 1060” in the future.
The app rolled out in big cities across the United States over the summer, following a soft release in his native Australia.
The Southern California News Group recently caught up with Snowden by phone while he was in town for the Los Angeles launch party hosted by real estate moguls Josh Flagg, Rayni Williams and Oppenheim. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: What does 1060 mean?
A: 1060 essentially means giving agents and home lovers ‘a 10’ experience in 60 seconds.
Q: What inspired it?
A: I’ve always loved that short-form video format.
You look at apps like Bumble for dating and TikTok for entertainment, and what they have done to their credit is made the user experience social and fun. In TikTok’s case, it’s that short-form video experience in an endless scroll. That single feature is probably one of the greatest of the 21st century because it’s winning the world over and transforming industries overnight.
But I realized then (this was two years ago) that’s not the case in real estate. Real estate is about photos and text, and it’s been that way for decades. I think a short-form video is more powerful than a picture or words.
Q: At what moment did you know that 1060 was a winning idea?
A: When we first launched it in Australia and then started going to New York and LA to talk to the biggest names in the industry — and no one said no to it.
People embraced it.
Q: Which part of the market do you target?
A: We targeted luxury at the start. It makes sense, right?
If you’re a new platform and want to be seen, you get the big properties that look great but also the top agents. And if you do that, other agents will come. It makes the platform original and so scarce that people will go, What’s this? Oh my God, it’s got all the world’s most amazing houses for sale, and that’s the killer difference. These are all real properties for sale.
So we do luxury, but it’s not all we’re about. We think it’s going to be really big with rentals.
What’s the cool thing about rentals? There are a lot of young people renting. And what do young people like? They like new apps.
Q: 1060 has been called “the TikTok of real estate” for its continuous scroll of fun, short-form videos. But how does it differ from TikTok?
A: The powerful search feature is probably No. 1. You can search by agent, agency or property — you can’t do that on TikTok. The second most powerful feature is that it’s just real estate, and we vet every agent — they’re approved manually. There’s no algorithm.
We realized early on we couldn’t have people come on who are not agents because it’s not a social network. It’s a property platform that has social network features.
Q: How long do the videos live on 1060?
A: They can live forever unless you delete them like any content-based platform. Basically, you start shooting properties on a phone, or you upload them. They have to be active properties for sale or rentals.
Once they sell or rent, you just move them into your history, and they’ll stay there as long as you want them to stay there. Or you can delete them.
Q: How do you make money?
A: To be frank, we don’t know how we’ll make money yet. We’re just happy to be growing and want to get a lot of content on board. At some point, we’ll probably have a premium model.
Q: So, what’s next?
A: This is it. We just want to make the experience better for buyers, renters and agents.
Matthew Snowden
Title: Creator
App: 1060
Hometown: Melbourne, Australia
Before 1060: In 2012, Snowden developed the award-winning children’s educational iPad app, “Inside the World of Dinosaurs.”
Voice by British actor Stephen Fry, the interactive dinosaur encyclopedia allowed kids to browse through the 60 prehistoric creatures of the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods in various ways.
Snowden rebranded and relaunched the landmark app a year later as “Walking with Dinosaurs: Inside Their World” in partnership with BBC Worldwide.