{"id":62369,"date":"2021-09-10T08:28:06","date_gmt":"2021-09-10T06:28:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wwwtest.ginesta.ch\/immobilienwissen\/the-only-thing-that-counts-is-the-number-of-quick-completions\/"},"modified":"2025-10-29T16:46:21","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T15:46:21","slug":"the-only-thing-that-counts-is-the-number-of-quick-completions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ginesta.ch\/en\/immobilienwissen\/the-only-thing-that-counts-is-the-number-of-quick-completions\/","title":{"rendered":"“The only thing that counts is the number of quick finishes”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rising prices mean rising commissions for real estate agents. Now new players are entering the market that offer the same service for less money. Will the traditional real estate agent soon no longer exist?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Claude Ginesta: You are quite wrong if you assume that the same service is offered for less money. That is not economically feasible. It would also mean that we brokers would have margins of 50-70 percent. The new players sell standardized, digital services and may replace today’s unprofessional self-sellers in the future.<\/p>\n

What are the differences?<\/strong>
It’s clear that the new players – I’m deliberately not calling them “brokers” – have to make concessions in terms of performance and expertise. For example, compared to Neho, we have found that at most one employee out of 26 employees with sales tasks has an SVIT\/USPI diploma in real estate sales. We have 28 real estate diplomas – trustees, brokers, valuers and administrators – with practically the same number of employees.<\/p>\n

What can customers expect?<\/strong>
The customers who hire these low-cost players have to make do with lateral entrants from outside the industry who “look after” most of the value of their assets. They compare a hamburger from a fast food outlet with a hamburger in a good, certified restaurant. In a restaurant a chef cooks, in a fast food business perhaps a student or a machine.<\/p>\n

It is argued that commissions are old hat and no longer justified by current real estate prices. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Agents and, above all, real estate sellers are currently benefiting from rising real estate prices. We have found that one particular fixed price provider has only been on the market for half as long as a traditional broker. This is the proof: 
It is not the sales result and thus a longer structured sales process that counts, but only the number of quick deals.<\/p>\n

How do traditional brokers do it?<\/strong>
Traditional brokers are incentivized by the percentage to achieve as high a sales result as possible, as the broker participates in the sales success. In the meantime, 50 percent of all contracts are concluded with dynamic commission, i.e. brokers have developed a bonus-malus system and sellers allow the broker to participate in the success of the sale, or penalize him if this success does not occur. With the fixed-price model, the seller loses much more money than he supposedly saves.<\/p>\n

The supply of properties for sale is scarce. Has it become more difficult for brokers to get hold of such properties? <\/strong>
Depending on the region, between 20 and 40 percent fewer properties were published on the marketplaces in 2020. This has to do with the fact that the properties sell better “under the table” or estate agents place the properties directly with their customer base. However, the “many buyers versus few properties” mismatch is nothing new – and above all, it has nothing to do with the new players.<\/p>\n

How was it for you? <\/strong>
We were lucky – or perhaps it was a bit of skill – that we were able to significantly increase our acquisition volume again this year.<\/p>\n

Brokerage work is not limited to selling single-family homes and condominiums. Estate agents are also used for initial lettings in new-build projects. Do the new players even have a chance here?<\/strong>
The new players have not yet penetrated this market environment of lettings and new builds. New construction projects in particular are the supreme discipline in real estate sales. You can’t plan, set up and then successfully sell real estate projects with career changers, former ice hockey players, bricklayers or hotel managers.<\/p>\n

New portals also offer fast and favorable ratings. Is that still serious?<\/strong>
Many traditional estate agents now also have free property valuations on their homepages. These valuations are based on similar or identical basic data provided by the banks. There are five providers of hedonic (quick) ratings in Switzerland. Such a free evaluation is not bad for a first indicator. However, many providers and marketplaces misuse the free ratings purely as a lead generator.<\/p>\n

And how does the expert do it?<\/strong>
Accurate valuations require a local expert who knows the market and carries out an assessment on site. In contrast to the new players and lead portals, traditional estate agents value properties using real value, net asset value, income value, DCF, cash value or location class methods. This is where the wheat is separated from the chaff.<\/p>\n

The new online evaluators argue that digitized processes save costs. Have traditional real estate agents not taken digitalization seriously enough?<\/strong>
Digitalization is a major topic and concerns all of us brokers. If you don’t have a certain company size or work with good IT partners, it can be difficult in the future. Unlike the new players, we brokers know how the business works. Now we have to digitize where there is no human benefit. However, we are much more digitized than we are portrayed in advertising. A big “stop” sign needs to be put up here: Young providers are trying to make a name for themselves at the expense of traditional brokers. The advertising mentions, for example, that traditional brokers cannot offer virtual tours or are unable to build up updated customer databases. This is ridiculous misinformation for the layman. It also borders on unfair competition.<\/p>\n

The message from the new players is: “Your time is over, we want to break up the encrusted system”. How encrusted is the broker system?<\/strong>
Every disruptive player claims that an existing system is encrusted and outdated and that they would offer innovations with their ideas. The exciting thing is that fixed-price models have already failed in most parts of the world. Purplebricks, for example, has experienced a colossal crash landing in the USA and Australia. In Switzerland, too, there are already some fixed-price brokers who are “no longer on the market”. Other players are currently trying to sell quickly because the business model cannot be sustainably profitable.<\/p>\n

Can you give some examples?<\/strong>
In Switzerland, Neho claims to be the “largest broker in Switzerland”. Independent evaluations by the Chamber of Real Estate Agents have shown that Neho had a market share of just 0.4 percent of the advertising volume on marketplaces in the whole of German-speaking Switzerland, i.e. excluding Ticino and French-speaking Switzerland, in 2019 and 2020. The actual largest brokerage company had a market share of 4.1 percent during this period and was therefore over ten times larger. If one considers the Chamber of Real Estate Agents with its 120 or so members as a network and equates it with the large franchise companies, the Chamber of Real Estate Agents was very clearly the largest player in the industry with a market share of 6.3 percent. Neho was perhaps the only market leader in terms of advertising budget. However, the truth content does not improve if defamation and false information is repeatedly published to the brokers. <\/p>\n

Comparison of Claude Ginesta professional brokers versus digital portals: “In a restaurant, a chef cooks, in a fast food company perhaps a student or a machine”. <\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n

Original article as PDF<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RealEstateReport No. 30 \/ June 2021<\/p>\n

“The only thing that counts is the number of quick finishes” <\/h1>\n

Interview by Remi Buchschacher with Claude Ginesta<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Disruptive real estate platforms that are forcing their way into the realm of traditional estate agents are entering the market almost on a weekly basis. Claude Ginesta, Vice President of the SVIT Chamber of Brokers, strongly criticizes the new players’ advertising claims at the expense of traditional brokers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":11567,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[383,736],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-the-company"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ginesta.ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/revenue.jpg","featured_image_data":{"title":"Increase,Revenue,Concept.,Businessman,Help,To,Speedily,Increase,Revenue.,Spaceship","url":"https:\/\/www.ginesta.ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/revenue.jpg","width":500,"height":334,"srcset":"https:\/\/www.ginesta.ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/revenue-400x334.jpg 400w","sizes":"(max-width:400px) 400px","type":"image\/jpeg"},"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/www.ginesta.ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/revenue.jpg","readingTime":6,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ginesta.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ginesta.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ginesta.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ginesta.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ginesta.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62369"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ginesta.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73270,"href":"https:\/\/www.ginesta.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62369\/revisions\/73270"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ginesta.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ginesta.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ginesta.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ginesta.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}