Executive Summary: RE/MAX Executive Homes is using Property Flow to save time in publishing, managing and sharing their property listings online.
Company: RE/MAX Executive Homes is a Real Estate Agency specializing in expatriates living and working in Bangkok. RE/MAX Executive Homes offers comprehensive service to their clients encompassing: pre-relocation interviews, needs assessment, property searches, contract negotiation, landlord relations, and assistance in concluding business upon departure. They offer property location services for residential rental properties. Their mission is to be the recognized leading Expatriate Residential Property Agency in Bangkok.
The Director of RE/MAX Executive Homes Homes is a Canadian Entrepreneur, Gerald Enright. Early in his career, he started out software project management then continued on in a number of senior projects roles as well as various IT consulting roles for Fortune 500’s in Canada, USA, France and Thailand.
In 2000, Gerald launched started Executive Homes, a real estate business geared towards serving Expat clients seeking long-term accommodations. At that time Gerald worked primarily in his software business.
In 2015 Gerald rejoined Executive Homes, in the role of Business Development and Marketing. Under his direction, the company grew year over year through initiatives in technology and marketing.
In 2016 Gerald assumed the role of Managing Director with a vision of taking this company new levels. In 2016 Gerald bought RE/MAX franchise and rebranded the company to RE/MAX Executive Homes. The goal was to leverage the brand recognition, business model, network, and technology platforms.
Challenges: Globally, RE/MAX has more than 110,000 agents in 7,000 offices and operates in 100 countries. RE/MAX Executive Homes deals with a high volume of properties on a daily basis, so their top priority was to leave behind the non-scaleable process they used to manage their listings and embrace a new alternative. RE/MAX Executive Homes team needed a solution that would allow them to manage their listings easily and efficiently and also help them on the Marketing side.
Problems and Solutions
After our talks with the RE/MAX Executive Homes team, we managed to identify some of the pain points, and how the Property Flow platform has helped eliminate repetitive tasks and help make the day to day task easier and more streamlined.
The pain points identified are very common among Real Estate Agents and Brokers throughout Thailand across South East Asia region.
Lack of digital tools and proper online workflow result in unnecessary extra manual work, that could easily be avoided.
Central Listing Management
Like most Real Estate Agents in Thailand, the RE/MAX Executive Homes team was managing their Real Estate listings using Excel Sheets, and their images on a shared network drive. Managing the properties offline was inefficient, and time-consuming, and prevented the team from easily marketing the properties through various online marketing channels available in order to generate leads. Searching for listings was difficult due to industry sensitive search features, and also often required in-depth knowledge about the Bangkok market to be able to find properties matching the client’s requirements.
Sharing information about the matching properties to clients was a manual task, where all listing info and images were manually copied and pasted into emails and sent to prospective clients.
Property Flow allows RE/MAX Executive Homes’ agents to collaborate and be more self-sufficient when accessing property listings. Each agent has their respective property listings. They are now empowered to be in charge of managing both their listings as well as their leads.
Searching for properties for their clients is now easier, and quicker through the powerful search capability provided by the platform.
Matching properties can quickly be exported as PDF documents and sent to the clients, or multiple properties can be shared conveniently through the platform through a few clicks in a branded email.
To increase sales Real Estate Brokers need to drive in leads for their team. This can be done through various online channels.
In Thailand, there are some well established Real Estate portals like DD Property, HipFlat, Dot Property. Each of these portals requires manual input of listings or an XML integration to allow an automated upload.
Attracting foreign investors for buying properties in Thailand is getting increasingly important, and in different periods there are different groups of investors interested in the Thai market. A few years ago the Russians were buying a lot of properties. More recently, Chinese are investing heavily in Thailand properties. Getting the properties marketed on the leading international portals is very important to reach foreign investors.
In addition to the Real Estate portals, social media is an increasingly important source of leads and general brand awareness for the Broker.
Property Flow functions as a channel manager for Real Estate and allows RE/MAX Executive Homes to distribute their property listings to online portals both locally and internationally.
Through one click, the Broker can enable automatic distribution of the listings to the various Real Estate portals so there will be no need for any special software development work by the Real Estate portal or by the Broker.
Marketing the properties on a specific portal is now a pure marketing decision and does not require any technical challenges.
Through the platform the RE/MAX Executive Homes can share their properties on Facebook Pages, Facebook Groups as well as on Twitter.
Old and outdated listings
The nature of real estate in Thailand is the prevalence of open listings; many properties are being represented by multiple agents, resulting in duplicated and outdated listings cluttering many portals. Keeping track of all posted listings hosted on multiple online marketing channels is difficult and time-consuming, resulting in outdated listings being kept online.
Marketing outdated listings that are no longer in the market results in unhappy clients and a bad consumer impression in the frustration they experienced when finding many listings that are no longer available.
RE/MAX Executive Homes no longer need to worry about this, since all data required for the portal to take the listings offline will be provided by Property Flow once the agent marks a specific property as unavailable.
Co-Brokering
The majority of Real Estate Brokers in Thailand are open to collaborating with other agents, helping each other transacting more sales, and increasing their revenue.
Today co-Brokering is an ad-hoc task by most agents, where agents are posting in Line groups, Facebook groups or sending emails to multiple agents asking for help to find a property or to sell a property.
Property Flow provides a seamless way for agents to search the complete inventory of the platform without having to go to other portals for researching properties. With more than 25,000 frequently updated properties for rent and sale throughout Thailand, it is likely that you will find properties that will help you close more deals by collaborating with other agents.
The RE/MAX Executive Homes can now easily research properties, and collaborate with agents all over Thailand.
Mobile Workflow
We all are accustomed to using mobile for many of our day-to-day tasks, checking news, paying bills and following your friends on Facebook.
Being able to perform your job efficiently through mobile applications is very important for professions like Real Estate who are the move in the community and not tied to their desk at the office.
Property Flow mobile agent app empowers the RE/MAX Executive Homes team to have access to all their properties on the go. They can quickly access critical information about specific properties or find other properties matching clients requirements while meeting with their clients.
Properties can be shared with clients through the mobile app, to other popular apps like Line, WeChat, Facebook, Whatsapp and more.
Conclusion
The RE/MAX Executive Homes team is pleased when using the Property Flow platform and have streamlined and improved their workflow by migrating it to an online platform. They have reduced administration time and increased market exposure. The net result is an enhanced ability to generate leads daily and increase their sales!
Property Flow Agent App can be downloaded here!
