Fortimy – The platform that promotes property requests, not properties!

The headaches from endless hours scrolling reams of property listings on scores of realtor sites are over, thanks to a truly unique real estate proposition from Fortimy, a startup from founders brothers Tiago and Diego Slegers, whose inspiring story is born from the ingenuity to solve very real problems.

Text: Chris Graeme Photo: Supplied

In 2021, enterprising bothers Diego and Tiago Slegers embarked on an adventure into residential real estate during the Covid-19 pandemic by founding Alti Estates, a real estate company that is fast becoming known for its excellence and service within Cascais, Sintra and Lisbon.

Instead of taking the advice of realtor friends in the business to start off small with regular €500,000 property listings, the duo decided to aim high and go for the luxury property segment. But with little experience selling high-end properties, how would demanding, often foreign High-Net-Worth Individuals (HNWI) even take them seriously with so few listings and clients?

“What you have to remember is that since we were starting out, we had no listings portfolio to speak of, or indeed any portfolio of luxury properties that we had sold to show prospective HNWI clients that we were experienced and had a good reputation in the market. All we had were our vision, our combined educational backgrounds and curriculums working in companies,” recalls Diego Slegers.

“Through constant analysis of how the real estate sector works and how we were running our business and measuring Key Performance Indicators, I noticed there was a major gap in the market. It was very easy and transparent to locate properties, but there was nowhere we could go to find property requests [what people want to buy or rent].”

The answer was Fortimy, a web portal (wholly separate from Alti Estates) where both individual buyers and estate agent professionals acting on behalf of their clients’ requests can describe the kind of properties they are looking for. Agents can then browse through these property requests to see if they have any suitable listings on- or off-book.

This was an idea born out of the entrepreneurs’ needs to swiftly and efficiently locate and match the right properties for their clients.

“It can be very time-consuming scrolling through scores of other platforms and ringing around contacts to see what listings they, or someone they knew, had,” Diego recounts.

The pair had noticed that the majority of the real estate market was focused on representing sellers and not buyers, and even their websites were all about promoting properties.

Diego says that the reception to the idea has been “fantastic” from both consultants and brokers.

“We were at the Portugal Property Fair in May this year when we got a lot of interest and our stand was one of the busiest,” he adds.
So far, Fortimy already had 30 people working on the project, and over 250 companies and around 2,000 property consultants signed up, with many deals already struck as a result of the portal.

“We believe Fortimy has solved a problem with a unique concept proposition that, as far as we know, doesn’t exist anywhere else in the local property market in Portugal, because unlike traditional platforms, Fortimy gives priority to requests and not listings.”

Innovative software

The duo developed a specific innovative software tool to help individuals and professionals amplify their reach, allowing their property requests to have greater visibility. By having this new visibility of property request, agencies can cut time, costs and speed transaction time.

With Fortimy, another great feature for estate agencies is that off-market sales prosper while the privacy and security of sellers are protected.

In the beginning, the process was not all plain sailing. “It took time for us to analyse and adjust our platform to the needs of our users, but we’ve done that, and from the feedback we’ve got, the platform is now meeting 90% of functional expectations.”

The brothers say they have plans to eventually expand Fortimy to other countries, but for the time being will continue to develop their unique value proposition in Portugal.