Cleaning up the worst industry for scams and ripoffs - real estate

Partnergo's referral and review system brings transparency to a market notorious for scams and rip-offs, reports Tech in Asia

Back in 2012, Tanya Cheng’s finances weren’t doing great. Despite having the better part of a decade’s experience in investment banking and derivatives, she lost a good deal in the stock market – “I bought all the right things, but didn’t sell when I should,” she says. To recoup her losses, Tanya decided to get into real estate.

What she found was a world of shady deals, ripoffs, scams, and outright lies. Nobody trusted anyone – and for good reason. She visited 12 countries within one year to take a look at properties and became more convinced that the entire international real estate industry was in need of a drastic clean up.
 

“I was shocked to find out that international realtors would provide misleading info or overcharge expats in Hong Kong, and how Chinese agents do the same to Chinese buyers,” she says. “It’s not just buyers that don’t trust real estate agents: the agents don’t even trust each other.”
 

It probably isn’t a surprise to hear that international real estate is a complicated affair. But just because it’s complex doesn’t mean it has to run inefficiently, or be flush with bad deals. That’s the philosophy behind Tanya’s company Partnergo, founded last year, which aims to be a transparent, referral-based network of real estate professionals throughout the world.

During her year of real estate exploration, Tanya took to Twitter and LinkedIn to voice her opinions about the state of the industry.
 

“My inbox was always inundated with mails from realtors,” she says. “From them I learned many of the professionals’ unaddressed pains.”

This is an excerpt from Tech in Asia. You can read the full article here.