The best seller of your house is yourself, Chris van der Voorn knows from his own experience. 'It saves you a considerable amount in real estate agent's fees, you can ask for a higher sales price and it's fun too'. He started gmak, an online platform that guides you to successfully sell your home without the intervention of an estate agent.
How gmak?
'When I decided to sell my home myself two years ago, I ran into quite a few barriers. I had to get the knowledge from everywhere. How to find out what the resale value of your home is, what is meant by a conditional sale, but also about energy labels. I needed a lot of information from other parties. It cost me a lot of time, but it also gave me a lot. I saved realtor fees and sold my house for more money than estimated beforehand. That got me thinking. gmak started with an awful lot of ideas to make that process easier.'
How does gmak work?
'Through gmak.nl we make the sales process transparent and understandable. We offer support in several ways. First, by helping with the information available about your home, such as estimated sales value, floor plan and lot information, and more. Then by providing tools that make selling as easy as possible-your own home website, an online planner for viewings, and templates for a sales contract. And if you can't figure it out, we put you in touch with experts who can help you further - a photographer or a lawyer, for example. Through gmak we try to guide people through the process for free. Where you need extra help, it costs at most a few dollars.
Tools, service, convenience, all for free?
'The transactions that take place around a move are of interest to commercial parties. Because through gmak we follow the sales process from beginning to end, we know the customer journey of buyer and seller, and can connect parties on that basis. So we can help moving companies, kitchen suppliers and mortgage lenders to obtain interesting information. That's where the value is for us.
I think it's cool to see this kind of innovation in an existing business model like brokerage. gmak is daring to go for it.
Diederik Jongema | Investment Manager FOM
Are homeowners really waiting for gmak?
'Yes indeed. We have researched this thoroughly. Selling your own home is totally contemporary. With gmak we show buyers and sellers that it is actually not that exciting. We use technology to make things easier for people and bring parties together. It's great to see that people can sell their homes independently with gmak. Not just because they can, but because they want to.'
I believe these entrepreneurs can really change the market with their online experience and knowledge of the housing market.
Klaas Kooistra | Investment Manager NOM
gmak so, how are you guys getting on?
'Last year we went live. Our plan has potential. Meanwhile, the first 100 homes have been sold, customers rate us with an 8 or 9. Instead of continuing to develop the platform on our own, we started looking for investors. With help from NOM and FOM we can scale up our development team and further optimize the platform to reach a larger market share faster. We are going to accelerate. It remains risky, it remains entrepreneurial, but treading this very path where no one has gone before makes it very exciting.'