In an interview with PME Magazine, Gonçalo Roxo, tells the story of Your Property Advisor, which since its inception has negotiated +50 properties in Portugal, saving a total of 3M€.
You can check the original interview on the following link. Below is the translated version.
Founded in 2020, Your Property Advisor is a real estate consulting company that was born to fill a market need: to 100% satisfy and protect the needs of customers when buying real estate, accompanying them throughout the search and real estate purchase.
In an interview with PME Magazine, Gonçalo Roxo, one of the founders of Your Property Advisor, tells the story of this company, which since its inception has negotiated 52 properties in Portugal, saving a total of three million euros for its customers.
Gonçalo Roxo – Our real estate consultancy company was created to fill a need in the Portuguese real estate market. We noticed, with the knowledge we had of the sector, that the real estate market had a strong partnership relationship between agencies and sellers, but that the buyer was left out of this equation. The market lacked someone who was primarily concerned with the needs of this client and someone who would support and provide a consultancy service at all stages of the search for and acquisition of a property. So that we could be faithful to this vision, we chose not to hold a real estate portfolio, to guarantee the absence of conflicts of interest. That is, to commit ourselves to looking for the best property available in the entire market according to the buyer's preferences. We also considered that, with this service, we could make the home buying process simpler, ethical and transparent, as we act as the only point of contact between the buyer and the seller. Therefore, and since there was room in the market for real estate consulting companies that focused exclusively on the needs of the buyer, we founded Your Property Advisor, in 2020.
G. R. – Although this means that we have no listings, it is an opportunity, as it gives us the freedom to search for all available properties throughout Portuguese territory, which is an advantage for the buyer, because he knows that whatever his needs are, we can submit several proposals that meet your interest. If we had a portfolio of properties, our tendency would be to adapt what we had to the needs demanded by our clients. We would be acting in our interests and earning more commissions for each property sold, which is not the case. On the contrary, we want to save our customers by negotiating the value of properties.
G. R. – This segmentation came about naturally due to the appreciation that this public already has for this service. The entrepreneurs and foreign investors that look for us come from all over the world. Germany, England, Finland, even the United States of America, Brazil and Hong Kong are some examples. Some contact us with an interest in living in Portugal. Others are interested in running businesses in Portugal and creating wealth for our country and, for that, they need their own accommodation. However, we want to start working more with national customers. We feel some difficulty in reaching this public, but we believe that this comes from the fact that the consultancy service is still not recognized and valued. Hence, one of our objectives is to promote real estate literacy in the Portuguese real estate market. We want to change this reality and show that we can be an asset by being facilitators in the home buying process, which is often very time-consuming and bureaucratic.
G. R. – So far, our total volume of transactions is around 30 million euros. We plan to double the amount next year, as we expand our services to the Algarve region and increase our team.
G. R. – One of the characteristics that sets us apart is our negotiating capacity, which is always focused on the interests of our clients. The value of savings of three million euros is calculated through the sum of the discount values that we have already obtained for our customers in two years of activity. That is, we subtract the initial value for which the property is being sold from the negotiated value. For example, we have already managed to negotiate a discount of 340 thousand euros on a property in Cascais for one of our clients.
G. R. – Traffic restrictions were, for us, the main challenge when we launched Your Property Advisor. We had, of course, restrictions on visits to properties and our partners and real estate agents in quarantine, which made it difficult to carry out our work. Our customers were ready to buy, but were isolated in their countries without being able to travel to Portugal. We even had customers traveling by car from Switzerland to Italy in order to catch a plane to our country. Despite all this, we managed to overcome the challenges and carried out our visits and purchases online, through video calls. It was even, at that time, that we bought several properties for investment funds for a group of investors, which represented great support at the time, as they looked at the pandemic market as an opportunity.
G. R. – We hope to continue to grow as a team, increasing our area of expertise and action. We are currently three property advisors and have training in management, sales, architecture and design, which gives us comprehensive knowledge when negotiating real estate. The increase in expertise in these areas and in others related to real estate is an added value for us to be even better at focusing exclusively on our customers, the buyers. The next step, with hiring more property advisors, is to expand our services to the Algarve region, where there are more property transactions. We hope, last but not least, that we manage to win more Portuguese customers over so that they see us as a partner that transforms the home buying process into a more informed and transparent one.
Stay tuned for more news about Your Property Advisor.
