During 2018, the real estate market suffered a blow: the exchange rate instability shook a sector that operates with the dollar as the reference currency, since it climbed 110% in one year.
The impact gave full effect to the UVA mortgage loans, a tool that had come to boost the activity, but which lost its utility in the face of a devalued peso and inflation that continues without giving up. Thus, the chances that a good part of the middle class realizes the dream of renovating their home or accessing their own roof disappeared.
In this complex scenario, several real estate players chose to rely on technology to reconvert their business and offer new solutions for a public that was left helpless in the face of the sharp rise in the greenback.
One of them was the RE / MAX real estate network, which partnered with Lendar, a collaborative platform of mortgage loans among people that offers the possibility of obtaining a loan avoiding the payment of bank fees.
This system, known as crowdlending (collective credit), allows two individuals to connect with each other to achieve a mutual benefit: on the one hand, the applicant for a loan to purchase a home or make a replacement, and, on the other hand, a investor willing to grant that money and get a return for it.
One of the advantages is that by agreeing between individuals, the profit of financial intermediaries is eliminated. Thus, those who ask for the funds pay less interest and those who ask for funds get a higher return.
In the case of the proposal promoted by RE / MAX, through Lendar, the applicant can obtain an initial amount to renovate or finance up to 30% of the value of the property and pay in fixed monthly installments in a maximum period of five years. The rate starts at 7.9% per year in dollars, depending on the term of the loan.
The mechanism is simple: just access the platform to make the request 100% online. In 24 hours a pre-approval is obtained and in seven days the credit is granted.
When carried out digitally, the process is 70% faster than that carried out through traditional banking.
"The growth of orders is exponential, up to 100% per year, and with a report of 700 monthly simulations," explains iProUP Josefina Estivariz, co-founder of Lendar, an ally of RE / MAX.
"This is a very interesting alternative to traditional loans, since it is done in a transparent manner and without intermediaries," explains the executive, who also points out that as the RE / MAX network grows (today it has 3,000 agents). throughout the country) the number of people interested in this financial method increases.
"We are committed to achieving something that until now was not possible: that people buy their house without the need for a bank, and we introduce a new alternative of reliable investment and high profitability in the market", remarks Estivariz.
Another of the real estate companies that is betting on crowdlending is Capital Brokers Propiedades, which closed an alliance with Agilis, an online mortgage loan platform.
In this way, it offers its clients a simulation service of quotas in the act and pre-approval of credits within a week for those who wish to acquire a property with this financing system.
The user can complete on the site the amount of capital he needs, the value of the property and the income he receives to obtain an accurate valuation of the installments and the period in which he will pay the requested loan.
Agilis is associated with a bank that offers a faithful credit simulation, but is differentiated by the speed of the granting.
"Now, customers can do everything from one place: enter the company's search engine, choose the department, simulate their quota plan and pre-approve the loan in a week," says Hernán Siwacki, managing partner of Capital Brokers Propiedades, a iProUP.
In this way, the real estate company seeks to enter fully into a new era of services based on immediacy, technology, and personalization.
More technology, more sales
Among the developers who chose not to rest in a traditional model of selling properties is Eidico, which "went up" to the Mercado Libre platform to boost sales and generate a greater view of their ventures.
From the beginning, the company had an unconventional view of the business with the creation in 2014 of its own market place: Eidicom.
It is a multi-service online platform that allows customers of the company or third parties to make subscriptions, sales, rentals and assignments quickly and safely.
"We realized that technology was a fundamental ally for this business and we started to venture early, we joined Mercado Libre to obtain not only greater visibility, but also to integrate online processes into our service offer", explains Patricio Lanusse, director of communication and marketing of Eidico, in dialogue with iProUP.
In this way, investors who acquire a property and publish it in Eidicom can replicate it with a single click and for free in the e-commerce portal of Marcos Galperín.
This was added in August a new platform to market real estate projects within Mercado Libre that also allows you to pay for the reservation with a credit card, something that until now did not exist in the real estate sector.
For that occasion, the first joint launch was made, which was the Altos del Encuentro neighborhood, in Benavidez. "Its scope was very important, since several thousand potential buyers were registered, about 1,000 prospects and the 90 units of the enterprise were sold," Lanusse details.
These figures demonstrate the advantage granted by the technology applied to the traditional real estate market. In this sense, the exposure of an enterprise increases to double and the number of interested parties increases up to 30 percent.
"While commercial traction of real estate continues to exist, today the customer makes a prior search in the digital world," says Lanusse.
In addition, the executive says that his next innovation will be the implementation of the digital signature for purchase and sale contracts, something that still awaits state approval.
Another important player in this market is Properati, a real estate sales portal that grew strongly in the region and reached a sales agreement with OLX in December.
"Although it was consolidated as a platform and received year after year the necessary funding to continue growing, we still needed to scale to other countries in the region," says Gabriel Gruber, founder of Properati, to iProUP.
That was precisely what they found in OLX, who integrated this Argentine company to give it a boost: this year it will reach Ecuador, Colombia and Peru.
One of the main features of Properati is that it has around 70 developers who decided to leave the conventional sales channels and bet on the digital universe.
"Our model is unique, since we charge them for contact and we take the risk for them, which is the opposite of what happens with other platforms," ââGruber emphasizes.
Invest in "bits"
The new economy offers new ways to access a home or to "save" on bricks. In addition to crowdlending, there is also crowdfunding (collective financing), a model that some companies in the sector are already betting on and which iProUP already gave.
These platforms offer users the possibility of investing in real estate development and owning a percentage of the property. Once it is built, it is sold and each of them receives a proportional sum.
The local company Sumar Inversión was one of the first platforms of this type globally to finance a single-family home with this system: a house in the private Pilará neighborhood, in the Buenos Aires municipality of Pilar.
Víctor Zabala, founder of the company, explains to iProUP that there were some 35 investors who funded this property by paying US $ 10,000 each.
"The profitability is given against the sale of the house and savers can buy it and, eventually, get a special bonus for that action," he remarks.
Another example is Bricksave, an Argentine firm that allows you to invest from US $ 1,000 in properties located in different parts of the world.
"With crowdfunding you can have 'pieces' of the property and in this way make it more accessible to ordinary people," says Sofia Gancedo, CEO of the company.
In this way, the sector is renewed so that buying a property is more accessible and agile for users. "The real estate companies must be more efficient as the consumer today begins their search on the Internet, if they do not aggiornate, they will inevitably be left out of the market", concludes the founder of Properati.
