Transforming the real estate sector: how Monapart supports real estate agents

Discover how Monapart has transformed the traditional dynamic to provide more effective and equitable support to independent professionals in the sector.

The challenges facing independent estate agents

At least one thing will need to change in the real estate sector: the relationship of agents or small agencies with what I will call "big agencies" or brands.

This is because:

• The challenges of being independent in real estate: Being an independent agent and remaining competitive is often too emotionally demanding, expensive and increasingly difficult.
• The importance of modern tools and resources for independent agents: Small agencies are finding it difficult to keep up with the tools and resources needed for a modern real estate practice.
• The end of 'False Self-Employed' models in real estate: models based on "false self-employment" - agents without the benefits of being an employee, but with their obligations and dependencies; that's a bargain - are starting to be inspected by the Ministry of Labour. I think their days are numbered with their current model.

Change in the real estate sector

Almost seven years after the emergence of the first proptechs in Spain, we can see that:

• There has been no disruption. The purchase and sale transactions, even with a more digitalised operation, continue to be carried out as usual.
• Agents are still as relevant as before the real estate "revolution"....
• The proptechs that are trending towards greater adoption (I believe) are those that empower and add efficiency to the operation of the agent or agency and therefore require their existence, not their supplanting.

So, everything has changed, but everything remains the same, right?

Yes, for three reasons which are, if you like, different sides of the same triangle:

• Real estate is a business of trust.
• Real estate is a proximity business.
• Real estate is a "last mile" business, the most difficult to standardise or digitise (also in logistics).

So, yes:

1. Agents are here to stay;
2. Proptech makes them more efficient; and
3. They are finding it increasingly difficult to keep up with the times in terms of investment, tools, knowledge and skills.

How do we as large agencies/brands position ourselves to respond to them?

The Monapart solution

I will count what we do at MonapartFor one simple reason: we go out of our way to give experienced and active agents what we think they need to do well and we do it, I think, in a way that no one else does.

• The brand works for real estate agents, not the other way around: Large agencies must abandon their role of "agent container" to reclaim the role of "agent infrastructure", i.e. become back-office service providers to agents. In short, they should consider agents as their clients. Agencies thus "move away" from the end client (the homeowner or homebuyer) to cede this role to the individual agents for whom they work, whom they serve.
• We prioritise the agent's personal brand: The Monapart brand becomes a subordinate brand to the agent's personal brand. The Monapart brand is the small brand at the bottom; the agent/agency brand is the big brand at the top. The Monapart brand is like the "Intel Inside" sticker on PCs. It is the mark of an operating system, the mark of something unseen but known to be relevant. It should be an agent's prerogative to make Monapart - a backoffice brand - his or her primary brand, but never an obligation. If any agent thinks that Monapart dresses him more than his own brand, go ahead; but he must be clear that the role of an agent is not to contribute -at zero cost!- to the penetration of another brand, which is what thousands of agents have been doing for decades.

So what is the value of being accompanied by the Monapart brand? Well, X things: (1) That you have a "big" support team and operational structure; (2) That there is a marketing department to promote the property; (3) That the support brand has an excellent rating and is reliable; (4) That you are part of a community of agents selected for their quality, a professional elite.

• Flexibility, the key to success for the estate agent: the agent should not be obliged to manage all their business through the big agency/brand. If they are independent agents, if they maintain their autonomy, if they have and must maintain their own brand, if they are, after all, the clients, then they cannot be required to have any form of exclusivity in the same way that no restaurant can require a client to order and eat a dessert.

If, as a platform, we consider ourselves an infrastructure, then we must let the agent or agency decide when that structure is the most appropriate for managing a transaction. For this reason, we work for some agents who only manage home sales and purchases with our support, but not rentals or land transactions or building brokerage. And the reason is because some of these operations they can, want to and know how to do without our support. Other agents want to do everything with our support and, of course, we think this is even better.

• Real estate agents earn more and manage better. The agent should not retain less than 70% of the fees. Agents must earn more and must entrepreneurialise their practices. Agencies should no longer hand out the equivalent of a "salary" as a percentage of fees, but agents should charge more and start managing their fees as part of a company budget. From this budget comes their salary, but also their reserves, their investments, their training budget, and so on.

Conclusion "short and to the point":

There are (more) curves coming, agents will be more independent and autonomous, they will have more branding and will want to earn more money. In this context, large agencies/brands must find their place to keep up.

At Monapart we are redefining the way agents operate in the industry, giving them the tools and flexibility they need to thrive. The future of real estate is here, and Monapart is betting big.