YungChing Realty Group breaks the 'zero-sum game' with Real Estate Agent Joint Sale Platform

Explore the platform's remarkable success in enhancing property transactions and customer satisfaction whilst fostering a stronger sense of unity amongst real estate agents.

The YungChing Realty Group's Real Estate Agent Joint Sale Platform has emerged as a noteworthy force in the real estate industry, recently earning the acclaimed Taiwan Technology Excellence Award for PropTech - Real Estate at the Asian Technology Excellence Awards.

The company’s groundbreaking platform challenges the traditional norms of real estate agencies in Taiwan and brings innovation to the forefront.

Traditionally, the real estate agent industry in Taiwan operated as a "zero-sum game," where individual success overshadowed collaborative efforts. The fierce competition amongst independent legal entities, even within the same franchise, often led to a lack of transparency, reduced transaction efficiency, and an industry marred by fragmentation and disputes. This environment also fostered unethical practices and conflicts amongst agents, tarnishing the industry's reputation.

In response to these challenges, YungChing Realty Group embarked on a transformative journey, initially establishing cooperation guidelines through contracts and regulations.

In the first quarter of 2021, the group introduced the Real Estate Agent Joint Sale Platform, designed to enhance transparency, real-time information sharing, and equitable collaboration amongst real estate agents from various franchise stores. The platform facilitates the exchange of housing information, cooperation in property viewings, and transaction facilitation, enabling agents to reap the rewards of their combined efforts.

Since its launch, the Real Estate Agent Joint Sale Platform has delivered remarkable results, increasing the number of property transactions facilitated through collaboration by nearly 40%. It has shattered the constraints of the "zero-sum game" scenario in the real estate agent industry, fostering efficiency in property transactions, promoting healthy cooperation, and enhancing customer satisfaction.

As a testament to its success, the YungChing Realty Group has witnessed remarkable growth, with its number of stores surging from 1,300 to more than 1,600 after the platform's launch, representing a remarkable growth rate of 23%. This exponential growth has firmly established the YungChing Realty Group as a leader amongst real estate agent brands in Taiwan.

In this exclusive Q&A, YungChing Realty Group delves deeper into its transformative journey and challenges it faced, its innovative approach to measuring the platform's success, and the profound impact this technology-driven initiative has had on franchise stores and real estate agents.

Can you tell us more about the zero-sum game situation in the Taiwan real estate industry and why it has persisted all these years? Why does your company deem it necessary to be addressed?

In general, in the process of buying and selling houses, any real estate agent can provide services to both buyers and sellers. However, only the agent who successfully brokers the transaction will receive the commission. Other agents do not see a return on the costs they invest during the process. This intense competition amongst real estate agencies in what resembles a "zero-sum game" industry ecosystem inevitably leads to information opacity, a model of solitary working-process, and even shady competitive tactics. Consequently, it hampers the efficiency of property transactions.

For example, a homeowner wants to sell his property and commissions Agent A to handle the sale. After promoting and showcasing the property, Agent A receives a call from Agent B, who indicates that he has a potential buyer and that he wants to visit the house in person. During the property visit, Agent B discreetly contacts the homeowner and completes the property transaction. Sadly, Agent A, who was responsible for promoting and showcasing the property, essentially ends up with nothing to show for his efforts.

It's also possible that during the property visit, Agent A obtains the buyer's contact information and, bypassing Agent B, directly completes the transaction, leaving Agent B with no compensation. Therefore, even when both the buyer and seller are interested in completing the transaction, Agents A and B may, due to their competitive stance, conceal each other's involvement and attempt to independently match the two parties in order to secure their own profits.

If these issues can be resolved effectively, the ecosystem of the real estate agency industry can be redirected from the logic of individual success to one of mutual cooperation, and the efficiency of real estate transactions can be significantly improved. 

Having been used to the zero-sum game situation, what were your main challenges in implementing the Real Estate Agent Joint Sale Platform? How did you overcome those challenges?

The primary challenge lies in how to use technology to present the information of the joint-sale process in a real-time and transparent manner to the real estate agents representing both buyers and sellers, which enables the agents to establish mutual trust and collaborate on the basis of information transparency.

Additionally, the joint-sale process involves many different steps and aspects, each with its own unique information and technological requirements. Integrating a variety of different service functions into a comprehensive platform and aligning with the needs of real estate agents is also one of the challenges.

After the launch of the first generation of the Real Estate Joint Sales Platform, the team continually iterated and improved the platform's functionality based on the feedback from real estate agents’ using experiences. Finally, the platform’s functionality met our standards and produced satisfying results. 

How did you measure the success of the Real Estate Agent Joint Sale Platform? How has this initiative been received by franchise stores and real estate agents?

The success of the Real Estate Joint Sales Platform is measured by whether the number of transactions completed through joint sales has increased as well as whether the time taken for joint sales transactions has decreased. 

According to our data, since the launch of the Real Estate Joint Sales Platform, the number of joint sales transactions has increased by 40%, and the average time for joint sales has been reduced by 26%. Franchisees under the Yung-Ching Realty Group have given positive feedback on the platform, stating that it significantly contributes to their job performance. Some franchisees have noted that through the Real Estate Joint Sales Platform, their performance has noticeably improved, and transaction efficiency has increased.

What does this win at the Asian Technology Excellence Awards mean for your company? How will this success boost your business?

The YungChing Realty Group's winning in Asian Technology Excellence Awards not only signifies that YungChing Realty Group successfully uses technology to overcome industrial challenges in the real estate agency industry but also highlights YungChing Realty Group team’s remarkable technological innovation and integration capabilities. It serves as an inspiration for the team. In the future, YungChing Realty Group will continue to invest in PropTech research and development, consistently exploring the potential applications of technology in the real estate agency industry and working towards creating the next-generation property technology.