The Tranio Story

George Kachmazov, Founder and Managing Partner

Back in 2010 my family bought property abroad. Back then I was the managing partner of an e-marketing company but what I really wanted, was a company of my own. I saw potential in the overseas real estate segment: there were many clients, potent market capacity, an interesting product, international exposure and, as it often happens, low competition in Russia. I was determined to make the best overseas property project on the market, with detailed information about acquisition terms, registration procedures, maintenance costs and expenses in other countries. Most importantly, I wanted our product to aggregate the maximum number of property listings quoting actual prices.

We started the design and development in 2010, and launched the website in March 2011. At first, we expected to cash in the same way most overseas real estate web portals do: selling advertising and paid listings. Yet, at the same time, we disliked the idea because abundant advertising always detracts from user-friendliness and website quality.

So we decided to go our own way and become Russia’s largest overseas property broker. We didn’t want to be an agency because clients were reluctant to deal with Russian agencies as they rarely added value to any transaction and had been known to overprice the property they were selling. More often than not, they became an unnecessary obstacle to buying overseas property for their clients.

We established our own direction: making Tranio a bridge on the client’s way to property. We connected interested buyers directly with the best local sellers in the region working in the requested market segment. We openly shared partner contact details and explained why we recommended these companies. That way, clients started cooperating immediately with our partners and our staff were there to establish and facilitate the rapport. Our fee is a part of the commission earned by our agency partner if they make a sale.

We decided to become the country's overseas property broker by making Tranio a bridge on the client's way to foreign real estate markets.

Many tried to talk us out of this business structure, saying it was “too complex” and questioned whether our partners would actually pay up. However, we believed that we would find the right partners and we were not mistaken. We are currently working with more than 700 real estate agencies and developers. We closed our first transaction in the spring of 2012 and by the end of 2017, we had closed over 750 deals.

Tranio started working with overseas investors in 2015. By 2017, 26% of all our transactions involved foreign clients. In particular, we closed several large commercial real estate transactions in Germany to nationals of Pakistan, Turkey and South Africa.

In late 2016 we launched our first development project in Barcelona, and followed this with another in autumn 2017. In 2018 we plan to launch development projects in Greece and Germany.

I believe that our successes are due to the attitude we have towards our clients, partners and employees. Our principles are common sense, hard work, diligence in executing our tasks, and a desire to reach mutually beneficial outcomes: finding the right property at the right price for our clients, and sharing the commission with our foreign partners. We insist that prices quoted to our clients are exactly the same as if they had contacted our partners directly – this is a crucial condition for our partnerships.