Immocatch – the platform for real estate auctions

The goal: To be as efficient as possible

With the auction platform ecatch, our team already had experience in developing an auction logic. But not only the experience was valuable for this project, but especially the fact that we could continue to use the existing infrastructure of ecatch. Our goal was to develop an appealing platform for real estate based on the ecatch principle in as short a time as possible.

The Swiss real estate market – high prices and strict laws

The challenge now was to adapt the auction platform to meet the special requirements of real estate. While simple products such as shoes or coffee machines are usually auctioned on ecatch, houses were to be auctioned on Immocatch. This required a high level of trust, as users are by no means dealing with small amounts here - but with prices that can reach into the millions.

In addition, there are strict laws in Switzerland for the sale of real estate. Compliance with these laws had to be incorporated into the user flow, e.g. the user had to provide documents on financing in order to be able to bid in the first place.

But especially the process after the end of the auction is special for real estate: Winning the auction doesn't automatically mean buying the house, and you can't order it like you would a coffee machine in an online store. Instead, in this type of auction, you buy the right to purchase the house at the price offered. The actual purchase then proceeds in a manual process. The auction is not legally binding for either side, buyer or seller.

Customized bidding logic

Due to the specific requirements of the real estate market, we had to adapt Immocatch's bidding logic. We had to make sure that users build trust with Immocatch when placing multi-million dollar bids. The bidding process had to be absolutely high-quality. The difficulty for us was to implement this bidding logic without affecting ecatch's code.

Specify maximum price and bid automatically

One feature of Immocatch is automatic bidding: Users can specify their maximum price and the tool places bids for them to facilitate the bidding process. The current price is not the one the user has defined as the maximum bid, but the second highest bid. This means that even if a user specifies 1 million as the maximum price, it is possible that he will get the house for 800,000 CHF if there are no higher bids.

Good organization and efficient way of working

Our clients wanted a product that worked flawlessly, and we delivered in a very short time: Everything was customized in just 6 sprints. Our advantage, besides the existing basic building block, was that our experienced team was well-organized and worked efficiently. We knew which solutions to look for and were then able to find and implement them quickly.

A white-label template with many possibilities

Immocatch is a template that any other real estate company in Switzerland can also use. Originally developed with Daniel Grossen with the branding for the Bernese company thomasgraf AG, the platform is nevertheless an open white-label solution. Companies that want to offer their own auction platform therefore have it easier than ever with Immocatch: Simply register, choose the layout (colors, fonts, logo, etc.), and add your own content. Nothing is hardcoded, i.e. anyone can create their own auction platform with their own branding without any programming knowledge.