Mr Bouris and his ASX-listed investment and mortgage broking firm Yellow Brick Road have taken a 5 per cent stake in PropertyNow, joining BRW rich-lister Jeremy Same as shareholders in the privately-held company.
PropertyNow founder and director Andrew Blachut said three years of courting Mr Bouris paid off when he bought into PropertyNow earlier in this month.
“The business is aggressively growing,” Mr Blachut said.
“The idea of bringing Mark on what to use his expertise to give us advice on that growth. Last time I talked to Mark he was busy with The Apprentice program and Yellow Brick Road, but thankfully he saw some value in us.
“My business partner Jeremy is extremely successful in growing businesses. We have great product and service but not business leverage.”
“Every dollar that we could be turning into profit, we decided to put into new technology and marketing. I think right now it’s more important to invest money into marketing the brand.”
Mr Blachut believes agent assisted selling is the future of real estate and agents will have to remodel themselves to adapt to the trend.
“The primary function of PropertyNow is to empower people to sell their own homes without spending on commission,” he said.
“It’s not an overstatement to say that the industry is in massive upheaval because of ourselves and other companies. “We’ve seen thousands of examples of people selling and saving commission and getting higher price than several agents appraisals. I believe it’s the future of real estate.”
The website has 2000 clients in sales and rental, making it the single largest real estate agency office that is not a franchise, Mr Blachut claims.
Mr Blachut, a real estate agent who formerly worked for companies including LJ Hooker, started the company 12 years ago after feeling there was something “lacking” in the industry.
“The first property we sold was in Ramsgate in Sydney. It sold readily and we got a few more listings around and developed gradually and slowly.
“We’ve had a lot of industry challenges, initially a lot of agents tried to get us removed from realestate.com.au. Now most agents are supportive of what we do. Just like in any industry, agents will have to remodel themselves based on change. It’s a bit like taxi drivers have had to adapt to apps in response to Uber.”
Mr Blachut is quick to assure that clients still get the same level of service as a commissionable sales agent.
“Our clients are delighted by our service. We didn’t want it to be a tacky way to sell. Clients have got an agent in their back pocket. There are three ways to contact our support team: email, text or phone call. We have three agents currently working in our support team and another five people who are not agents but who have been real estate industry for 10 years or so.”
PropertyNow charges less than a $700 fee and says it is not a FSBO platform.
The company launched with no external investor funding, only cash from Mr Blachut and Jeremy Same. Mr Blachut says the ultimate goal is a stockmarket float.
“But the first step we intend to bring in private equity. After that process, we will assess if it’s appropriate to float. It does provide benefits but there is a lot of red tape.”
The company has been rewarded for its technology innovation.
“We were given a $70,000 tax offset by the government in the last financial year because we invented a totally unique inquiry system. When you have 2000 clients on a 1-300 number it gets very busy. We devised a completely innovative new system and we were awarded with an innovation rebate,” Mr Blachut said.
