'Property Dealer' is a familiar term, which is associated with buying, selling, or renting out a property. All of us at some point of time require the services of a property dealer. But very often, we perceive the broker to be an unprofessional part-timer opportunist who would either inflate property prices / rentals expected by the seller and make money from the buyer by selling it at a premium or hide vital details about the property which the buyer would come to know only after moving in.

National Award winning film – Khosla ka Ghosla also discussed some of the extremely serious issues about the unaccountable nature of the property dealer in a not-so-serious fashion.

However, at the same time, real estate brokerage could be a highly lucrative business. Building an organised business is no doubt a difficult ask. It calls for heavy investment, bang on recruitment, and a network spread which will take years to build. Here is where franchising comes to the forefront. In various mature markets across the world like US, Canada, Europe, South Africa, Middle East, Australia etc, real estate franchising network like RE/MAX offer similar opportunities and provides franchisees and agents with a local, regional, national and global network, world-class training, advanced technology platform, power of collective marketing, and a host of support services.

To tap the lucrative real estate brokerage franchise opportunity, many professional companies and individuals are coming to the fore. Even old and established players are now repositioning themselves and are emerging as trusted and reliable partners and some have also been very successful in taking their business to the next league. This draws our attention to some of the other significant developments in this highly compelling sector. These are:

1 - Reassuring trust in the hearts and minds of the customers

2 - Emergence of One-stop shops

3 - Importance of database

4 - Internet presence 

5 - A strong telemarketing unit

6 - Local, regional, national and international clientele

7 - Better quality human resource

These developments have brought about a polarisation between two categories of the realty brokerage businesses. The first is the organised brokerage sector, which leverages the strength of a team of professional agents, and enjoys the advantage of the bigger scale of business. It is also able to generate referrals from all over the world.

The second category includes the scattered part timers and individual operators who work on their individual network and on a fixed clientele. As the consumers become more aware and savvy, this category of brokers is doomed to become irrelevant and their individual network would become an extremely limiting factor. 

The good news is that all the franchising leverages can be enjoyed by the Indian entrepreneurs also. However, RE/MAX is not a first mover in this category, few other international and local players have also entered India through the franchising route but have not been able to create much impact; the success of RE/MAX has proved that real estate franchising is here to stay and is indeed the future of Indian Real Estate Brokerage sector. The franchise is like a sports car, it is equipped with all the tools that one needs to win the race, but whether one wins the race or rams the car on the footpath, entirely depends upon its driver.