Meet the Propexa CEO - Ondřej Lustyk
In today’s piece, we would like to introduce the story of Ondřej Lustyk - the CEO of Propexa. Ondrej was kind enough to openly discuss his way into the real estate business by creating a bilingual real estate company that offers services in both English and Czech language.
Ondřej, if you could introduce yourself in just a brief manner, what would it look like?
Master’s degree from Economic University in Prague
Lovely wife Diana, one year old daughter Natalie and a four legged goldie named Toby
12 year hockey career and 5 year floorball experience behind my back taught me an importance of team work
Passionate traveler (USA, Asia, road trips around Europe)
A fan of good coffee and high quality rum “drinks”
Where exactly originates your passion for real estate?
It all started in 2013, when I began to work in a brokerage company as an independent mortgage specialist. Apart from the financing itself, I gradually started to assist my clients with the whole process of finding their dream home. This includes finding a property, booking appointments, personally inspecting the property, creating a price analysis, negotiating with real estate brokers and much more. You can say providing a “full service experience” that only a small percentage of mortgage specialists provided back then. My goal was to truly provide my clients with the best investment opportunity even if the process took longer than anticipated. This is where I discovered my potential in the real estate business.
Does it mean that you were in day-to-day contact with real estate brokers?
That’s correct. I was in touch with brokers throughout the whole process starting with the initial contact when booking appointments, collecting detailed information about properties including their legal and technical state, controlling the documentation between the buyer and seller and more. During my 6 year career as a mortgage specialist, I have met roughly 200 real estate brokers during my career in finances.
That’s a pretty decent number. Was there anything that really surprised you during the “cooperation”?
Well, I have to admit that there were a couple of surprising facts to me. The first and quite obvious one was the pretty low level of information shared between the brokers and potential buyers before and even during the appointment. I would personally expect from a broker to share with me at least a short introduction of the property, technical information, legal state, usable area of the property and every room. However, this was shared just in about 10% cases. The majority of brokers just opened the door, gave us a brief introduction, shared a bit of irrelevant information (in my opinion) and that was it. I was expecting a much more professional approach.
The second major surprise was a very low level of property presentation aspect. We can all agree that a quality presentation is a key factor when buying a real estate. It helps to ensure a fair positioning among the other properties on the market and also to creates an attractive story connected to emotions. C’mon, we are in 2022, the era of unlimited technological advances. There are limitless options on the real estate market.
These are just a few weak aspects of today’s real estate market. Of course I can list things such as unconfirmed meetings, unethical sales tactics, inconcrete deadlines, unorganized property takeover, and so on. But on the other side I have to admit that the level of real estate services has been increasing quite rapidly in the past few years. Inspiration by the America, British and French market is obvious. That makes me happy and looks very promising for the future development of the real estate market in the upcoming years.
What was for you the breaking point when you decided to be on the other side with the property owners?
Wow, I did not expect that one to come. I can’t actually remember the exact point. The process was more continuous when I started to create my own picture of professional real estate services in my mind. The real estate services being a game changer and bringing the real added value for the owners. I was putting together my vision in between 2019 and 2020, where I started to follow the TOP international real estate brokers and was educating myself in various workshops and lectures. All this led to creating a business plan - a solid foundation for my future company made of all these little pieces to create a valuable unit.
At that time, I did not want to force it by any means since I was quite overwhelmed by my projects in the financial sector. However, I was approached by two of my clients with a request to sell their properties, which was successfully accomplished. By the end of 2020 I realized that I truly have very capable people around me from the areas that I’m convinced are crucial for running a professional and successful real estate agency. And they helped me to turn this vision into reality.
How many people are currently in the Propexa team?
We are currently having 9 team members. The team consists of a video producer, photographer, interior designer, architect, creatives, marketing specialists, copywriter, administrative support and a mortgage specialist. But of course, with more cases coming, I'm considering extending our team by new members to guarantee a consistent quality of services.
Ondrej, can you tell us what’s the position of the real estate companies nowadays?
I would start from a more general perspective. The services of a real estate agency must really pay off for the seller. There are three different points of view in my opinion. Firstly, to sell faster than the owner would on his own, sell for the highest possible price tag, and save time for the owner. It’s a very simple, but truthful equation. It goes hand in hand with other variables such as the overall service quality, professional and friendly approach, empathy, and last but not least the methodology in case of every single step throughout the entire selling process. After we agree on selling a particular property, the team sits down at the round table and starts to create a detailed selling strategy including the positioning on the real estate market and targeting of potential buyers. We spent a fair amount of time by planning the presentation aspect - setting up the suitable marketing/advertising tools and channels for each property separately. I do believe that nowadays, real estate agents should invest more time and effort into detailed planning of the selling strategy including the professional presentation, rather than getting the property to the market as soon as possible. It dramatically increases your chance for fast, smooth and successful sale with the best possible conditions.
That sounds great! Would you share with us any kind of thoughts at the end?
Well, what really matters is to have the sellers on the winning side of this process. The real estate brokers should be your “teammates” that lead you to reach the “title”. Luckily for you, there are enough players to choose from. With hard work and dedication, every side can enjoy the process that ultimately leads to a successful sale and pleasant cooperation for all the parties involved in the process.