Klipster won't rescue video listing apps: Tech Review

Klipster is a TikTok-inspired listing marketing application for real estate agents who work with sellers and renters.

The value proposition is supported by a number of features such as the option to follow an agent, generate at-will organic social content, and for now, automate listing content scraping to expedite agent adoption, instead of connecting to data feeds or allowing for manual listing input.

Like others in the space, it leverages AI to transform static images into room pans and fly-throughs, includes a messaging feature, map search and agent profile page. It doesn’t use data feeds to import listing data but instead scrapes a new agent’s listing page for the information. Much of the process is automated to assist in account setup.

Highlights

• Familiar/low learning curve UX
• Agent profile pages
• AI content creation
• New option for video-savvy agents
• Agent-founded/designed for agents

Company summary

Klipster was founded by the founder of Modern Spaces, Eric Benaim and its COO, Arlinda Dine. They hired Rent.com co-founder Michael Taus initially as an advisor and then named him Chief Growth Officer. The company is in beta in New York and New Jersey and is aiming for a subsequent rollout in South Florida, where the condo/high-rise apartment market is also strong.

The company describes itself as an amalgamation of Zillow and TikTok. It’s been bootstrapped to date and has plans for a national rollout.

So, what’s different this time?

Replay Listings launched this exact model in New York in 2020 and is still up and running. Its iOS application was updated a month ago and boasts 71 ratings averaging 4.7 stars. I don’t know what its revenue looks like, but I know my 5-year-old review remains the thrust of its press page. Take that as you will.

I wrote the following in a 2025 update of an application called 1060 AI, which I reviewed initially in 2022 before it added the “AI.”

The company is based in Australia and first came to the U.S. market with a mobile video app more akin to a blending of TikTok and Zillow. It relied on agents creating short-form videos for listing in a vertical-scroll experience. It was location based and used an algorithm to suggest nearby listings a consumer may also want to consider.*

However, the app required agents to point the camera at themselves, something so many of them are uncomfortable doing, despite 1060 leadership targeting higher volume, social-savvy agents. It still didn’t work and the company shuttered the social search model … It now relies on users uploading six images to spark a marketing automation that then applies chosen templates, text automations, image enhancements and AI voice narration.

Holofy Spaces launched its version back in 2021, and in 2024, a company called Ask the Agent joined the fray, about which I wrote after choosing not to review it the first time:

I looked at this app first in October 2023 and needed time to collect my thoughts.

The team followed up in January with an adviser I know on board, encouraging me to have another look. The call didn’t go super well, even if the Ask the Agent team is made up of very nice, intelligent real estate industry professionals.

But I simply couldn’t hold my water after about 15 minutes of being told how easy it is to make a video using their software. My problem is that that doesn’t matter; it’s been easy to make video content for a decade, for as long as a person could point a mobile phone in their direction and hold their arm out. If agents want to be on camera, it’s not the ease of creation preventing them.

My intent is to demonstrate that each of these companies offer a similar solution to Klipster — easy-to-create video content. While each may still be in business (Good!), none of them have proven able to earn nationwide traction or peel away established agents from TikTok, Instagram or YouTube, networks that spend more money on consumer marketing in 30 seconds than any of the above can deploy in a year.

I mentioned this directly to Klipster’s Taus in our demo, and he promised that his experience is the difference-maker and that he welcomed my constructive pushback.

However, Rent.com is a totally different market launched in a totally different time, as 1999 was the dawn of the modern consumer services internet. It’s a quarter century later, and in terms of the digital marketing ecosystem, it might as well be a millennium.

Consumer attention for real estate market insight has been endlessly splintered, like a fluorescent tube dropped from the troposphere.

Buyers and renters can subscribe to popular newsletters and podcasts, watch reality shows and become subject to the marketing whims of an infinite number of other horizon-spanning digital business entities trying to trade listing data for money. The effort to earn their attention is beyond Herculean.

Beyond the inherent challenges of finding traction in this crowded category, Klipster will have a hard time scaling if it doesn’t formally integrate with a recognized industry data source.

At a minimum, scraping agents’ listing pages to speed onboarding is too slow and requires too much oversight. It’s problematic legally, presents data accuracy risks, can be burdened by sites that identify and block scrapers, and it doesn’t update in real time to accommodate price changes, among other data alterations.

There is little to no data standardization across listing pages and brokerage websites, and above all else, the permission channels are shaky. Did the brokerage authorize it? Does the seller need to know? Oh, and: Good luck getting an MLS to not put up a stink about it. Most of them have hard policies against it. Solid Earth describes the risks quite well in a 2024 blog post.

There is, however, one thing scraping has going for it. It’s a cheap way for startups to collect listing data.

My early reviews in this space show that I want this model to work. I’d love to see more agents become comfortable creating video content and be willing to commit fully to industry-first media solutions for doing so.

Unfortunately, the audience is already divided, and companies like Meta, Google and ByteDance aren’t super willing to let them slip through the grip of their algorithms. Hell, I had to download a separate app to reduce my use of Instagram. That’s what Klipster is up against.

All said, I hope I’m wrong. I hope there’s some little talked-about update on their roadmap or a pending industry relationship that will propel Klipster into the marketing zeitgeist.

Maybe this is the one take on this model to make it to the big stage. In the words of Sally Bowles, it’s gotta happen sometime.

Have a technology product you would like to discuss? Email Craig Rowe

Craig C. Rowe has been writing software reviews for Inman since 2015. He started in commercial real estate at the dawn of the dot-com boom, helping an array of commercial real estate companies fortify their online presence and analyze internal software decisions. He consults with residential brokerages and agents on technology decisions and marketing and helps Inman readers understand the ever-evolving landscape of proptech.