Imobiliária Agency will open four offices in Portugal and has already hired 30 people. The company expects to invoice between six million and eight million euros in the first year.
The Agency, a real estate company founded by Mauricio Umansky, which has already had a series on Netflix (“Buying Beverly Hills“), has just arrived in Europe via Portugal. The focus will be on the luxury residential market, at a time when more and more North Americans are coming to the country.
The brand, through franchising, will open four offices – Lisbon, Cascais, Porto and Algarve – and already has 30 employees. The goal is to reach between six million and eight million euros in the first year of operation in Portugal and to have a portfolio valued at 500 million euros.
“We understand that Portugal is the gateway to Europe,” Ayres Neto, managing partner of The Agency Portugal, tells ECO, noting that there has been a “huge demand for real estate in Portugal from Californians.” “Almost 50% or 60% of the Americans who come here are from California. They come fascinated by the climate and other factors characteristic of Portugal,” he notes.
Despite the strong interest from Americans, the responsible notes that “there is not only one type of client”. “Fortunately, in Portugal, we can find offers to satisfy all kinds of needs and demands.”
The responsible says that, in the most premium segment, where The Agency operates, “are people who want to live in Portugal, more than just invest.
The start of the US real estate agency’s operation in Portugal will begin with the opening of two offices: one in the capital, on Avenida da Liberdade, and, at the end of the year, another in Cascais. This will be followed, in 2024, by a third office in Porto and another in the Algarve.
When he began the project of bringing the brand to Portugal, Ayres Neto imagined opening an agency in Lisbon with around 25 consultants. “Today we are already more than 30,” he tells ECO, noting that “almost every day” he does interviews with “colleagues from other brands.”
The Agency is looking for people “with a very differentiated profile. “I’m not looking for quantity, but quality: 90% of my consultants speak two to four languages,” he explains.
Ayres Neto refers that he wants to focus his activity in the same way that the American market works, based on “sharing” of fundraising. “We are never going to privilege full funding, as happens in Portugal. If I look for that I’m causing damage to my client”.
The outlook he has for Portugal is encouraging, since “foreign investment is constant. “The upper, upper-middle and extra-high markets will grow a lot. It is inevitable,” he tells the ECO, refusing the idea that it is only foreigners who invest in these segments. “There are many Portuguese coming back.”
Ayres Neto refuses the idea of a real estate bubble in the national market. He has lived in the US and says there is “no similarity” with the US real estate bubble. “Portugal has one of the highest homeownership rates in the world and a very high level of equity. The market metrics do not support the theory of a bubble,” he says.
