Klipster is a TikTok-inspired listing marketing application for real estate agents working with sellers and renters.
This value proposition is supported by a number of features, including the ability to follow agents, generate organic social content at will, and currently have the option to automate the scraping of listing content to drive agent adoption instead of connecting to data feeds or manually entering listings.
Like other services in this space, it leverages AI to turn static images into room pans and fly-throughs, and features messaging capabilities, map search, and agent profile pages. Instead of importing listing data using a data feed, get the information from the new agent’s listing page. Many of the processes are automated to help you set up your account.
highlights
Familiar/low learning curve UX Agent profile page AI content creation New options for video-savvy agents Founded by/designed for agents
Company Profile
Clipster was founded by New York City agents Arlinda Dine and Eric Benaim. They hired Rent.com co-founder Michael Taus initially as an advisor and later appointed him chief growth officer. The company is running a beta version in New York and New Jersey, and then aims to expand to South Florida, where the condo and high-rise apartment markets are also strong.
The company describes itself as a combination of Zillow and TikTok. This has been bootstrapped to date and there are plans to roll it out nationally.
So what’s different this time?
Replay Listings launched this very model in New York in 2020, and it is still in operation today. Its iOS application was updated 1 month ago and has 71 ratings with an average of 4.7 stars. I don’t know what their revenue is, but I do know that my review from five years ago is still a mainstay on the press page. Please feel free to receive it.
I wrote the following in a 2025 update of an application called 1060 AI, which I first reviewed in 2022 before “AI” was added.
The company is based in Australia and first entered the U.S. market with a mobile video app that looks like a combination of TikTok and Zillow. This relied on creating short-form videos for agents to view listings in a vertical scrolling experience. It was location-based and used an algorithm to suggest nearby listings that consumers might want to consider. *
But the app required agents to point the camera at themselves, something a significant number of agents were uncomfortable doing, even though 1060’s leadership was targeting more socially savvy agents. That still didn’t work, and the company shut down its social search model…it now relies on users uploading six images to trigger marketing automation, which applies templates of their choice, text automation, image enhancements, and AI voice narration.
Holofy Spaces released its version in 2021, and in 2024 a company called Ask the Agent joined the fray. I wrote about this after initially choosing not to review it.
I first saw the app in October 2023 and needed some time to collect my thoughts.
The team followed up in January with an advisor I knew who encouraged me to take another look. The call didn’t go very well, even though the Ask the Agent team was made up of very talented and intelligent real estate industry professionals.
But after about 15 minutes of listening to how easy it is to create videos using the software, I just couldn’t drink any water. My problem is that it doesn’t matter. For the past decade, creating video content has been easy as long as you can point your phone in your direction and hold out your arm. If an agent wants to appear on camera, it’s not the ease of creation that prevents them from doing so.
My goal is to show that each of these companies offers a similar solution to Klipster: easy-to-create video content. While each may still be in business (a good thing!), none of them have proven that they can gain national attention or lure established agents away from networks like TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, etc., where they spend more money on consumer marketing in less than 30 seconds than any of the above can deploy in a year.
I mentioned this directly to Klipster’s Taus during the demo, and he assured me that his experience makes a difference and that he welcomes my constructive objections.
However, Rent.com is a completely different marketplace that was launched in a completely different era, as 1999 was the dawn of the modern consumer service Internet. A quarter of a century has passed since then, and from a digital marketing ecosystem perspective, it might as well have been 1,000 years.
Consumer interest in real estate market insights has dispersed like a fluorescent tube falling from the troposphere.
Buyers and renters subscribe to popular newsletters and podcasts, watch reality shows, and are exposed to the marketing whims of countless other digital entities looking to exchange property data for money. It takes a lot of effort to get their attention.
In addition to the unique challenges of finding traction in this crowded category, Klipster will struggle to scale without formal integration with recognized industry data sources.
At the very least, scraping agent listing pages to speed up onboarding is too slow and requires a lot of monitoring. This has legal issues, risks around data accuracy, can put a burden on sites to identify and block scrapers, and is not updated in real-time to respond to price changes, such as data changes.
There is little to no standardization of data between property pages and brokerage websites, and worst of all, permission channels are unstable. Did the intermediary allow it? Does the seller need to know? Oh, and good luck trying not to give MLS a hard time. Most of them have strict policies against it. Solid Earth goes into great detail about the risks in a 2024 blog post.
However, scraping has one advantage. This is an inexpensive way for startups to collect listing data.
My early reviews in this area indicate that I want this model to work. We hope that more agents will get used to creating video content and embrace our industry-first media solutions for doing so.
Unfortunately, the readership is already polarized, and companies like Meta, Google, and ByteDance have little desire to escape the clutches of algorithms. Lo and behold, I had to download another app to use Instagram less. That’s what Clipster is up against.
All said, I hope I’m wrong. We hope there will be some small topical updates regarding the roadmap and pending industry relationships that will push Klipster into the marketing zeitgeist.
Perhaps this is one take on this model to take to the big stage. In the words of Sally Bowles, it’s got to happen someday.
Have a technology product you’d like to talk about? Email Craig Lowe
Craig C. Rowe has been writing software reviews for Inman since 2015. He entered the commercial real estate industry at the dawn of the dot-com boom, helping a series of commercial real estate companies strengthen their online presence and analyze internal software decisions. He consults with housing brokers and agents on technology decisions and marketing, and helps Inman readers understand the ever-evolving proptech landscape.
