How Property.ca makes buying, selling and renting property easier — and more empowering

Property.ca is more than just a real estate brokerage, says chief executive officer Bayan Qandil.

The Toronto-based company is a fast-expanding, technology-driven, full-service real estate business that provides unique services, tools and data to both real estate agents and consumers looking to buy, sell, or lease property across Canada. It’s a lead player in the country, providing vital information to Canadians.

“People turn to our platforms because of their best-in-industry search experience and in-depth, easy-to-understand data,” says Mr. Qandil, who officially took the top job in June 2020.

Proprietary neighbourhood and building-specific data set the company apart, he adds.

“We have liberated the data associated with real estate to enable both consumers and agents to make better, more informed real estate decisions.”

For instance, he says information on property.ca and its sister sites condos.ca and mrloft.ca gives users access to far deeper insights than they could find via the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) or realtor.ca.

Users can access demographic data, a proprietary algorithm that determines the exact square footage and price per square foot of a property, and sign up for alerts to find new sales or rental listings in certain buildings or neighbourhoods. All are “a huge draw,” Mr. Qandil says.

People also turn to the platform for its effective search capability. The site provides historical information on recent and past rentals or sales in a building or neighbourhood that aren’t always available to the public.

In the last two years, the company’s website traffic has jumped to 2.5 million views per month, up from about 1 million a month, while user growth has risen to 1.1 million per month, up from 500,000.

Most of Property.ca’s business currently comes from the Greater Toronto Area; however, the company plans to diversify by expanding across the country. Over the next few years, Mr. Qandil says Property.ca wants to have offices in 10 or more major cities across Canada, adding more users and specialized agents on its sites.

“Going across Canada, providing selling and investment opportunities, and growing our expert agent numbers will result in us doubling our transactions, more than doubling our revenues and increasing our profit margins by four times,” he says

Property.ca now has more than 250 agents across its network, up from 150 three years ago. Besides Toronto, it has offices in the Ontario cities of Vaughan, North York and Mississauga as well as in Vancouver. In addition, it plans to open an office in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont. this fall, and offices in Ottawa, Edmonton and other cities next year. The company is also looking at a potential pilot project in a major U.S. city.

Last year, its agents sold more than $1-billion of properties, even with the pandemic slowdown, and are on track to surpass $1.5-billion this year. Property.ca’s revenue growth from 2017 to 2020 was 88.9 per cent.

Mr. Qandil says agents are reaping the benefits, landing an average of 39 deals per month, up from an average of 18.5 deals in 2018.

The Property.ca platform helps agents find clients and scale their business using technology, data, performance management and a specialized training system. “We create high-performing agents with our platform,” Mr. Qandil says.

The plan is to boost the company’s awareness among Canadians and the company is in talks with business partners to achieve that goal.

“These business partnerships will drive people toward us as they begin their real estate journey.”

Advertising feature produced by Globe Content Studio with PROPERTY.CA. The Globe’s editorial department was not involved.