Terms of Service
With all the modern methods of communication, professional property advisors can easily recommend a multitude of services to home hunters, be they purchasers or tenants. Expertise in that specific sphere need not be required to make recommendations. IEAS will devise a system, to make it easy for Estate Agents to provide referrals and thereby increase estate agents’ income.
IEAS ltd will be a collection of various service providers, some fully owned, some joint ventures with selected partners, but all with potential to be market leaders.
Once IEAS Ltd. is up and running, we will start with low hanging fruit, some business areas which we have an expertise in.
Lets explore some of the opportunities;
1: Web portal:
A number of attempts have been made to take on the big two providers. With member buy-in, this will be a priority.
Daft.ie and Myhome.ie both make profits of more than €5m p.a. from estate agent’s fees, listings, and associated advertising. As recently reported in the Irish Times (Oct. 2021), Daft.ie paid a €15.37m dividend in 2021.
In short that is a lot of money taken out of Estate Agents pockets. If profit is to be made, lets’ make it ourselves, or alternatively, one can reduce listing fees for agents.
2: Mortgages, Financial Services, Property Insurance and Life Assurance:
Most buyers need finance. Many agents are not large enough to provide this service. This can be another low hanging fruit. There are various forms that this could take, from, a wholly owned online and technology driven brokerage, to a smaller referral-based business.
(i.e. Who says that a one-to-one meeting with a mortgage broker needs to be in person. What about a professional Zoom meeting, set up by the local agent handling the purchase/sale?)
3: Engineers Reports, Drains Testing, BER Reports
Inspection reports of various types, including drain testing, BER reports, etc., are becoming more and more a part of any purchase transaction. If the IPAV succeed in getting “Seller Packs” set into law, property sellers will be looking to us to advise how to go about this.
Could we be involved in recommending suppliers? Should we provide the service?
Even without the “sellers packs” purchasers are delighted with any guidance provided by the estate agent.
4: Utilities:
An Estate Agent is ideally placed to recommend a Gas, Electric, Refuse or Broadband supplier to a new property owner or tenant. People have a lot on their plate when they are looking to move in.
I recently received a €200 voucher/discount to switch my electricity supplier? Can we monetise this? Can we help property owners and tenants while also benefiting from a referral income? Of course… another win-win.
5: Property Technology:
Prop tech opportunities arise with increasing regularity. If they look like being profitable, we should be there, utilising our scale and our shareholder’s expertise to get in on the ground floor and avail of profitable opportunities on behalf of IEAS and its shareholders.
6: Furniture Removals:
This is a multi-million euro business, where Estate Agents are ideally placed to provide referrals, information and guidance on a necessary service. Be it a short move, or an international move, help is required, and a referral would be welcome in many cases.
7: Foreign Property Sales:
This might be an area of profitable commercial interest. Estate Agency fees in most European countries are far higher than in Ireland and Irish people have property all over Europe. Many Irish people who bought 15 or 20 years ago, look to sell a property as they get older. It is hassle to deal with an agent in another country/language. They might be delighted to deal with their local Irish auctioneer, as a joint agent if they were part of a larger organisation providing expert advice along with advice in selecting a local foreign agent would best serve their needs, in a joint agency type of arrangement with various “local” foreign based sales agents.
8: Tenant Insurance:
This is an area which has not been serviced properly in Ireland. Yet most tenants have phone insurance, car insurance, take out holiday insurance, etc.
A recommendation an e-mail link or an App, might be all that is required to develop a multi-million Euro business “Tenant Insurance” business.
9: Property Maintenance/ Commercial Property:
As we know only too well, property needs maintenance and services. On commercial property there are Fire Alarms, Lift Servicing, Smoke Alarms which all need regular upkeep, maintenance and servicing.
Who better to recommend providers? Or who better to become the provider? IEAS will examine opportunities and potential tie ups in this area.
10: Property Maintenance/ Residential Property:
On the residential side, people need referrals for all types of work required in relation to their home or investment property; Painting, Cleaning, Gardening, DIY. If there is an app for that, it should be ours. How often has a house needed cleaning, painting, gardening, plumbing before it is brought back to the letting or sales market? Is this a service we as agents can make a margin on, while recommending a good tradesman to OUR client?
11: Professional Indemnity Insurance:
All estate agents need professional indemnity insurance. If we can provide it at the same price as existing providers, we would hope that shareholders and others would take up the opportunity.
12: Stationary and other office essentials:
An Estate Agency Office Supplies company would be able to use its scale and the power of bulk buying to be competitive and provide office supplies both to agents and outside the estate agency original business targets.
13: Recruitment services:
Here is another market where we can provide a service to members. There are 5,000 plus registered and licensed property service providers. There must be the same number again in administration/support/accounts and financial staff.
IEAS Recruitment could be a market leader in Estate Agent (and associated staffing) recruitment before branching out to other related markets.
14: Retrofit Ireland
The recently announced government initiative to upgrade existing homes is another great opportunity which might have been overlooked, by estate agents. Grants are available, and an average retrofit will cost in the region of €50,000 to €75,000. Customer acquisition is a cost for all businesses, and the same will be true for companies offering “Retrofitting” services to property owners (landlords and home-owners alike), our customers, whether past or present.
Many companies would be happy to pay for a successful referral, and with customer acquisition costs of circa 10 to 15% of the project value, there is a multi-million opportunity here for estate agents who are the recognised “go to“ person for all types of property advice.
IEAS can become the market leader in these product/services?
All services will be competitively priced, and available for non-shareholding Estate Agents to sell/avail of if they wish. The question is, how best do we monetise these? Do we licence each of the above to an experienced operator for 3-to-5-year terms (renewed at our discretion only), or set up a joint venture?
Summary
There is a multitude of services which can be provided and/or referred by Estate Agents. They would all be an “arms-length” relationship, but once scale is present, profitable opportunities present. Most services will not need to be sold, just recommended. Some recommendations will be as easy as asking clients to “download this app for the best deal in home insurance/tenant insurance.”
We would hope that “member/shareholder Estate Agents” would be evangelists for the services offered.
Obviously, there is no way to accurately judge the net worth of the venture. In 10 years, it could just as well make a profit of €50,000,000 and have a net worth of 10 to 20 times this, or be loss making, and liquidated.
The risk is miniscule. The commitment is not excessive, and the potential is HUGE. You decide if you want to be involved….
IEAS will be a company owned by Estate Agents, providing quality service to Estate Agents, and for the benefit of Estate Agents, and their clients/customers.