How ZipMatch co-founder Chow Paredes is empowering Philippine real estate brokers

Chow Paredes belongs to a family of lawyers, but she isn’t one herself. She’s a licensed real estate broker. She has a simple explanation for why she chose a different path: “I’ve always loved sales. I do very well in sales because I truly enjoy doing it.”

That passion is what help her land a job in real estate, which would later help open up a world of opportunities for her.

After years of selling condominiums for various property developers, Paredes decided to take the plunge into entrepreneurship in 2013 and co-founded Philippine startup ZipMatch, now a driving force in the economy. ZipMatch is one of the country’s leading real estate portals that list and reviews properties for sale and rent.

For Paredes, however, ZipMatch isn’t only a business. It’s an advocacy.

Professionalizing the brokerage industry


Through ZipMatch, Paredes is empowering property brokers and sales agents in the hopes of erasing a stigma around the profession. She says, “People see brokers as persons who want to make a commission out of customers. More for personal benefit. That’s the common perception of the market today.” Brokers, she explains, are caught in a difficult position: they are hired by property developers to exclusively sell their products so even if the properties are not a fit for clients, brokers push for those sales anyway.

It didn’t help that it was only in 2009 that real estate brokerage was professionalized in the Philippines. That year, the country signed into law the Real Estate Service Act, which required brokers and agents to undergo gruelling licensure procedures. The intent was to boost the confidence of homebuyers by separating the grain from the chaff. The law laid down strict ethical standards and stiff penalties for fraudulent transactions and malpractice involving brokers that weren’t present before.

Paredes takes pride in being among the first batch of brokers who got their licenses in 2010. But she knows very well it takes more than a license to professionalize the industry. Old habits die hard – some brokers are still cutting corners and doing their business without a strong sense of accountability or genuine customer service.

This is where ZipMatch comes in. The team takes as much work as it can from brokers’ shoulders – from the nitty-gritty of researching properties for sale to listing these on the site to taking customer inquiries. This is so brokers can focus on what they do best aside from actual selling: relationship-building.

The team also provides useful content for brokers, focusing on topics like how to efficiently sell properties, how to be memorable to a client, and how to go the extra mile to service a client.

“The mission of ZipMatch is empowering homebuyers. In the same way, we also aim to empower professionals. If we raise the bar in terms of service, knowledge, and education, I believe we will be indirectly be helping the homebuyers by matching them with well-rounded real estate sellers,” Paredes says.

A vital tool


The ZipMatch team


Paredes shares that ZipMatch has devised a customer relationship management (CRM) solution, a helpful tool brokers need when engaging with homebuyers. Whether you’re a new real estate agent who’s looking for a way to manage all your contacts or a seasoned vet, having a good CRM is crucial when it comes to managing relationships with consumers, even though some of them are not ready to buy a home yet.

According to Paredes, the instinct of real estate sellers is to attend to the first customer who responds. They have the tendency to forget everybody else. Paredes confides that attending to and maintaining relationships with all clients is the real job in real estate.

ZipMatch’s CRM, which organizes and automates the workflow among its many other uses, helps brokers manage all interactions with past, current, and future clients.

“I’ve been in the real estate industry for almost a decade, and the reality is not everybody who you will talk to will immediately buy from you. But I make sure that all clients I have interacted with in the last nine years are still being serviced in a way, whether they’re buying or not. I send them updates, even as small as greetings on special occasions like birthdays, give them regular real estate advice, or anything at all that can help them be more smart and confident. If you consistently make and build this relationship with them, they’ll come back to you at some point for something, because now you’ve become their go-to person.”

Paredes is working hands-on on ZipMatch’s CRM. “I’ve been a long-time seller. It’s hard to break habits when you’re in the industry for so long. But the tool is customized based on, initially, feedback from my years of experience in real estate and managing sales teams as a broker, then from every broker we have engaged with. We created a CRM that would best benefit brokers like myself.”

However, Paredes clarifies that CRM is just a tool; it’s not the be-all and end-all. Converting leads into actual sales has as much to do with brokers’ behavior. What the CRM does is influence brokers to be more engaging with the homebuyer even after the sale has been made.

“It’s not going to be a magic bullet,” she says. “A lot of the success can be attributed to behavior. One of the CRM’s features is to push brokers to respond to clients faster than the usual one-week reply. But if the broker has no urgency of time, then we cannot change the broker’s behavior,” she points out.

“The broker has to be hungry enough to get more clients and shouldn’t settle with the ‘pwede na’ (this will do) attitude.”