This is a personal message from Christopher May and Nahim Rahman co-founders of Residential People, with over 30 years of experience in the property and financial services industry for both B2B and B2C.
We at Residential People, have spent millions on our global property portal and have always been free to list, yet we believe that if we are to succeed as a business, we need to do more for agents.
One message that has been clear from the community and the various online focus groups we follow is that the industry does not want yet another portal that doesn't support them or have their best interests at heart.
This crisis has taught us that despite the hardships the market faces, agents cannot band together as there is an element of distrust when it comes to the partnership between the agent and the portal. Until now there has been no opportunity for agents to have a real and tangible vote over the direction of a portal…. This changes today. We present an opportunity for agents to take genuine control and ownership. This will give agents a voice and a vote on what a property portal should focus on to help agents get the most value.
We’re tired of seeing agents being taken advantage of and having their data exploited, having run a successful estate agency in the past we know how this feels, this is why we believe that now is the time for change.
For this reason, we have decided to give agents the opportunity to own Class A voting rights shares for the first 7,000 agents that register their interest, effectively owning Residential People. With this, there will be a sitting member on the board that is chosen by the agents.