⌂For real estate and property management

With categories, not with separate lists — because the same person can be both.

A division that works:

• Owner — has or had a property.
• Searching — is looking right now.
• Formerly searching — has found something. This is your most valuable database: in seven to ten years, some of them will sell again.

What follows from this: both sides need a different approach. An owner gets market information; someone searching gets properties.

And the case you want to avoid: someone searching who receives an acquisition mail for owners. That is a category error, and it happens when you send without a selection.

With regularity rather than advertising — and with notes that still say something after seven years.

What works:

• One or two contacts a year, with something useful: a market report for the region, changes to subsidies, property tax, energy requirements.
• Get in touch when there is a reason. Someone who bought three years ago may now have a question about property management.
• Follow-ups with a horizon of years. “Ask again at the start of 2029” is a perfectly normal follow-up.

What does not work: monthly newsletters with properties to people who are not searching. That leads to unsubscribes, and then in seven years they can no longer be reached.

And note down what someone searched for or sold. That is the point of connection you will need later.

Above all the energy performance certificate details under the German Building Energy Act (GEG) — and they belong in every commercial listing, including on your own website.

They include, among other things:

• Type of energy performance certificate (consumption-based or demand-based).
• Energy performance value.
• Main energy source of the heating.
• Year of construction of the building.
• Energy efficiency class, for residential buildings.

In addition, since the reform of estate agency law, there is the question of commission sharing for residential property sold to consumers — and how it is presented correctly.

Your approach: include these details in your property presentation before a listing goes online. A breach can lead to fines and formal legal warnings.

Have your standard presentation checked legally once. After that, it is routine.

Fewer properties than most people think, and more about you.

What actually works:

• For owners: how marketing a property works, what it costs, what exactly you do. That is the page that brings in instructions.
• Offer a valuation. The most common way in of all.
• References from the region — anonymised if necessary.
• Who you are. In a deal of this size, people decide about people.

What works less well: a long list of properties. People searching search on the big portals. Your website is there for the other side — for those who want to sell or let.

And the properties you show must be current. A property that has been “available” for a year works against you.

Quickly and in one go — with property, speed decides who gets the deal.

A procedure that holds up:

1. The enquiry comes in — form, portal, email.
2. Create a contact, if new, with a search profile in a note.
3. Reply on the same day. Even if it is only “I will get back to you tomorrow with documents”.
4. Set the category — searching, with which profile.
5. Follow-up, if there was nothing suitable.

Point 5 is the most valuable: someone who finds nothing today is your best contact in four months — provided you still know what they were looking for.

And with rejections: be friendly, and say you will get in touch when something suitable comes up. That is not an empty phrase if you actually do it.

As a note and as tags — both, because they do different jobs.

In the note: what someone is really looking for, in their own words. “Terraced house, garden more important than size, walk to school for two children, up to 450,000.”

As tags: the characteristics you want to filter by — place, type, price range.

Why both: the tags make searching possible; the note makes the call a good one. Someone who calls and says “you mentioned the garden mattered more to you than the square metres” has won.

And update both: search profiles change — after a year of searching, the price range is often different.

By post: generally yes, as long as there is no objection.

By email: only with prior consent — even if the address is publicly listed on a website. This applies to private individuals and businesses alike.

By phone: for consumers, only with express consent. For businesses, presumed consent is sufficient — for a private individual with a property, that does not apply.

What follows from this: advertising by letter is the legally safest route in your sector — and it works surprisingly well, precisely because hardly anyone uses it any more.

What you need if you use addresses from public sources: information under Art. 14 GDPR — at the latest with the first approach.

You manage on an ongoing basis and deal with three groups: owners, tenants and service providers.

What that means for your database:

• All three groups as separate categories, because they receive completely different messages.
• The link to the property matters more than for estate agents: who lives where, who belongs to which owners’ association.
• Mass communication is your everyday business: announcements, invitations, statements.

And the point that matters legally: communications within the scope of the management contract are not advertising. An invitation to the owners’ meeting does not need consent. But as soon as you advertise your own services, the same rules apply as everywhere else.

The separation should be visible in the database — otherwise advertising slips into a mandatory mailing.

By selecting by property — for that you need a characteristic on the contact that identifies the property.

In practice: one tag per property, for example the address in a consistent spelling. You can then filter and send.

What to look out for:

• Everyone gets their own email. Never with all recipients visible — with tenant lists, that is a particularly unpleasant data protection incident.
• Anyone without an email address gets post. Check how many there are before relying on email.
• Observe deadlines. Some announcements have formal requirements — an email is not enough then.

And check the recipient list before sending. A tenant who has moved out and still gets the announcement is annoying; an owner who gets the tenant information is a problem.

Three things that are regularly overlooked in this sector:

1. Rights of use. Photos from a photographer need express permission for use on the internet — and it is often limited in time or to one property.
2. Personal rights. Interior shots show the residents’ furniture and belongings. That needs their agreement.
3. Neighbours. A drone shot that looks into the neighbour’s garden is a problem — however good it looks.

What you should do:

• Written approval from the owner for publication.
• For occupied properties, remove personal belongings or make them unrecognisable.
• After the sale, take the photos off the website if the permission ends.

The last point is almost always forgotten.

As a note on the contact and on the property — with date, time and the documents handed over.

Why this is more than tidiness: the claim to commission depends on your having provided the proof of opportunity or the brokerage. If a prospective buyer buys directly from the owner months later, you need evidence.

What belongs in the note:

• When you handed over the exposé, and in what form.
• When a viewing took place, and with whom.
• The notice of the obligation to pay commission — for consumers it must be given before the viewing and in text form.

The last of these is decisive: without timely notice in text form, there is no claim for residential property sold to consumers.

The portals are the sales channel, your system is the customer relationship. One does not replace the other.

What you should have in your own database and do not get from the portal:

• People searching who have not yet found anything — the portal gives you the contact, but not the relationship.
• Former buyers and sellers.
• Owners who may sell in five years’ time.

The procedure that pays off: every portal enquiry becomes a contact. Not only those that lead to something — it is precisely the others that are valuable later.

Because: the portal contact is one-off and expensive. The contact in your database is permanent and costs nothing.