EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Martijn Schneider, CEO and Founder, Housing Agent

We recently caught up with Martijn Schneider, CEO and Founder of Housing Agent, at the Property Portal Watch Madrid 2018 Conference.

Housing Agent, the Netherlands-based global platform is dedicated to delivering a stress-free moving experience to the families which are in constant flux, the expats, who currently number 55 million people worldwide, with predictions of reaching 87 million by 2021.

Schneider said that, since Housing Agent’s launch in 2018, the company has often been referred to as the ‘Uber for expats’. “Housing Agent makes the process of finding an agent easy and clear, empowering the users to compare agents, prices, language skills, etc.”. 

Thanks to efficient planning, Housing Agent has already made an impact on the market. "We laid the groundwork over the past decade, making sure that we have the brand names all set; we claimed all the domain names in multiple directories, and we trademarked them. That was a significant task.” stated Schneider. “The challenges which we are faced with now are easy in comparison,” he added.

“We learned from other companies which have grown too quickly, like Airbnb, that there are copycats stealing domain names to benefit from the established successful new brand. We made sure to secure domain names, and then we executed our plan, so that nobody could copy us.” 

“The domain industry is costly and ‘addictive’. We have a large portfolio, and maybe we don’t need them all. Perhaps we should have been more careful about how much money we spent on the domains,” he added.

We asked Schneider what he was looking to take away from attending the Property Portal Conference “This is the best, of course. Back in Amsterdam, at our headquarters, we would not be able to learn as much about international property portals, whereas here, we can meet them all.”

“This is where alliances are created. The journey to becoming successful in our business is clear, it is achieved by joining forces with others,” said Schneider. 

“A couple of years back, when Housing Agent’s structure was already finalized, I attended a Property Portal Watch Conference, and thanks to my exposure to other companies there, I was able fine tune the business plan, which then led to the current version of the platform,” he concluded.

Currently there are plans to expand Housing Agent into Belgium, Spain, Portugal, England, Germany and in its later stage in the U.S., Canada, Australia and the Asia Pacific region.

Join us in Bangkok the 19th to the 21st of March for the Property Portal Watch Conference.