Realty Bridges Real Estate — SME Case Study (UAE)

Realty Bridges Real Estate is a broker service that currently, through its ambitious and continued operations, has become an international agency within the sector of real estate attempting to fulfill the needs and requirements of its customers. Essentially, the company provides a seamless experience when selling or buying property to ensure that the customer, regardless of whether their dealings are the UAE’s residential or commercial property, are able to take part in the real estate business with ease.

The company’s goal is to offer residents with world-class services, retailers with compelling places, and investors with the best possible value. The company’s key ability Realty Bridges Real Estate is in business, as it has a number of connections with global as well as local giants of property that have been working alongside leading developers in the nation.

The company is unique in the sense that it only has 12 employees, making it a medium-sized organization (Acharya, 2020) and that it provides its clients with integrity, care, and trust through its personalized service and deep comprehension of residential and commercial property.

Within the UAE, the industry of construction and real estate hold the biggest and most important positions as not only means of investment, but also as means of employment and national productivity and innovation.

These industries are critical toward ensuring that the overall national population, as well as the expatriate population, are able to attain employment and investment (Abdallah, Al-Tamimi & Duqi, 2021).

This industry, alongside tourism, service, and so on, are what are currently thriving within the United Arab Emirates. In particular, the government’s push away from fossil fuels has allowed it to expand into such industries and open the doors for numerous companies and entrepreneurs to ensure that they can continue their expansion and operations whilst also securing higher standards of living. Through such industry expansion, the United Arab Emirates has been able to provide its overall population with higher living standards.

Residential Supply 1,000 units ‘20 ‘19 ‘18 ‘17 ‘16 ‘15 Dubai Abu Dhabi Source: JLL MENA, Global Property Guide Figure 41: UAE Real Estate Residential Supply In particular, the real estate sector of the nation has, since the 1970s, witnessed a great number of changes within the sector of real estate, moving from its 1975 2.2% gross domestic product contribution to its 2015 12.5% gross domestic product contribution (Abdallah, Al-Tamimi & Duqi, 2021). Academic research shows that the 2008 financial crisis has adversely impacted this sector since between 2007 and 2011, the sector of real estate’s gross domestic product contribution fell by almost three percent (Oxford Analytica, 2018) and as the world is currently befalling another global, financial, and economic crisis due to the ongoing pandemic, it seems that this sector may again be impacted.

Mission The company’s mission is that of providing its customers with leading services in terms of investment, selling, and buying properties both outside and inside the nation.

Vision The company’s vision is that of becoming a leading, one- stop solution for investors, sellers, and buyers within the global market of real estate by constantly placing efforts to develop relations that are founded on trust, integrity, and transparency.

Organizational Structure

The company utilizes a hierarchical, standardized structure with its executive director heading the organization and the overall organization being segmented into four segments including the real estate segment, the marketing segment, reception, and IT.

Marketing Assistant Front Desk Receptionist IT Specialist Real Estate Agent Marketing Representative Executive Director Marketing Department Customer Service IT Department Real Estate Department Real Estate Agent Real Estate Agent Real Estate Agent Real Estate Agent Digital Marketing Specialist Figure 42: Organizational Chart of Realty Bridges Real Estate Leadership The company is led by Samer Araje, a specialist with more than 200 individual connections through the industry of real estate. Araje completed his bachelor’s degree in business, management, marketing, and support related services, with more than two years in the real estate industry as the leader of Realty Bridges Real Estate.

During COVID-19, the company was harmed considerably as it was unable to make in-person dealings. This forced Realty Bridges to adopt more of an online focus by catering to customers through social media marketing and various other means. This placed the company in the position of continually reviewing, evaluating, and assessing its contemporary practices, as well as trying to better understand the online world and its marketing approach. For this purpose, the company employed an IT specialist alongside a digital marketing specialist and has since improved its marketing focus and approach.

This has shown that the company is able to maintain its functions and operations in spite of the conditions currently brought on by the pandemic.

Given the impact of COVID-19, the company has had to change its offerings a considerable amount.

Although it initially focused on real estate selling, investing, and buying, it now focuses on Dubai-based property management, off-plan projects within the emirate, obtaining citizenship by means of investment, consultancy services to help companies and individuals’ setup their businesses, and the swapping of property.

The company focuses on using its products in order to attract customers whilst also trying to meet its unique requirements of pricing. Essentially, it focuses on trying to learn the best way to make use of its suppliers’ production capacities and through this, the company is able to offer its products and services at reduced prices compared to its contemporaries. The money that the company saves through this is then spent on marketing and customer service.

60% 40% 20% 0% -20% -40% -60% 2006 2007 Growth % Price AED/SQFT (RHS) 1,000 1,500 AED 2,000 2,500 31% 52% 1,950 1% 5% 34% 14% 1,232 1,159 1,056 1,152 -6% -10% 1,372 1,203 -15% 1,000 -49% -1% -8% Figure 43: Dubai Prices and Performance of Residential Property

Mainly Realty Bridges has three operational strategies.

In this sense, the company focuses on optimizing its chain of supply to ensure that it is able to easily procure properties, list investments and vacancies, and offer the best possible prices to customers. Secondly, the company focuses immensely on managing the inventory available to it by placing advertisements and aggressively marketing them as soon as they arrive, whilst also maintaining a varied list of vacancies, sales, and so on in order to make sure that customers can easily procure the property they wish without worry (THOMAS & POTLURI, 2020). Lastly, the company, given its high number of real estate agents, focuses immensely on employee training to make sure that its workforce is efficient and well-trained, thereby managing customer requests and needs easily.

Whilst Realty Bridges had depended greatly on traditional advertising forms like posters and billboards, the company is currently moving toward digital marketing.

One of the main challenges for the company has been that of attaining and managing a sufficient customer reputation in the current conditions. Even before these, the massive market of real estate is one wherein small businesses such as Realty Bridges struggle to survive and require continued attention and focus. Mainly, the company struggled with marketing but during the pandemic, has been able to somewhat overcome this (Abdallah, Al-Tamimi & Duqi, 2021). Regardless, the company needs to continue its progress and focus in order to make sure that it is able to improve itself and thus, expand its marketing focus. Furthermore, the company has struggled to offer customers with the latest options, given the fact that it has a very small range. Overall, the business challenges that the company has faced and

currently face include the following

¡ Maintenance of customer reputation ¡ Attaining the respect and loyalty of customers ¡ Being a small business in a saturated market ¡ The COVID-19 pandemic recession ¡ Lack of product variety In order to resolve these business challenges, the

company has to

¡ Maintain sufficient online reputation through reviews ¡ Provide customers with follow-up feedback questionnaires and inquire about the possible deficits in the service ¡ Maintain an online presence and excellence in innovative fields and aspects in order to build a unique brand presence ¡ Abide by government issued standards of operations, regulations, and proper safety protocols ¡ Establish a research and development department in charge of introducing a variety of products, as well as making sure that the company expands into appropriate fields

In order to overcome the various challenges that it currently faces, Realty Bridges should push more toward social media marketing as well as search engine optimization in order to reduce the amount of budget that its marketing cost whilst also getting the most out of its marketing budget. Furthermore, by making its own platforms for real estate trade, retail, and such, the company would be able to greatly improve its current position within the market at large.

Successful Best Practices

The company has been highly successful in expanding its market range whilst also focusing greatly on each individual market and type of service that it expands to.

This has been mainly due to the fact that the company has a highly loyal and reliable employee base that is continually making efforts to improve it. In summary, the company’s successful best practices include the

following

¡ Expansion into various markets and fields of business ¡ Focus on each individual service and market ¡ A reliable and loyal employee base ¡ Continued employee training and development

Through the last three years of operations, the company has been unable to improve its foundation in the digital world and barely holds a place therein. Furthermore, the company has been unable to push toward establishing its own presence on a larger scale even whilst this has been its focus for the longest time. Lastly, the company has not been able to recruit employees in a sensible manner and its overall structure of organization lacks a human resource department, a digital marketing department, and so on and thus requires immediate focus. In this regard, the company’s failed practices include the

following

¡ Unable to improve foundations within the digital world ¡ Lack of push toward a larger scale presence ¡ Unable to recruit more employees ¡ Lacks various critical departments ¡ Has not focused on improving itself

Currently, Realty Bridges is an important player within the United Arab Emirates and holds a significant role within the real estate market. In spite of its small size as well as the number of competitors that the company faces, Realty Bridges has been able to consistently survive and remain profitable through its small yet loyal employee base and customers.

With the case in mind, the current author recommends that Realty Bridges attempts to improve its focus on the online world whilst also improving its foundation as a real estate company in the market at large. Essentially, the company should try to improve its overall brand awareness as well as its focus on the market. By doing so, Realty Bridges would be able to easily improve its position in the market whilst also attaining a larger base of customers across the market.

Lesson Learned

I learned the following lessons

¡ That a company can survive and be profitable in any market regardless of its size.

¡ Understanding the market and customers is important and critical toward success.

¡ If a company wants to, it can easily change its overall focus in order to cater to a bigger, underserved customer base.

In conclusion, it can be stated that Realty Bridges is a highly successful company that has to consistently improve its overall focus as well as brand awareness.

Currently, the COVID-19 pandemic has greatly affected the company and is something that has taught it a number of valuable lessons. By focusing more so on the different types of customers both within and outside of the UAE, the company would be able to establish a niche market for itself, thereby pushing the real estate market to newer heights. Additionally, by focusing more so on digital marketing strategies, the company would be able to better establish itself as a leader within the UAE in terms of real estate investment and purchase. Lastly, it can be stated that the nation’s sector of real estate is one that offers companies such as Realty Bridges with an unlimited number of growth opportunities.