Software for independent estate agencies: mandates, viewings, follow-ups

Listing portals sell an audience, escrow accounts require a professional licence, and electronic signatures go through a third party. Between these components remain the mandate register, viewing reports, and fees per mandate, poorly served by market tools.

INSEE counts 56,218 estate agency businesses, a 2016 figure and the latest published point in that statistical series. Apimo lists €89 per month for its customer relationship management plan and €139 for the higher tier (page consulted September 2, 2026, without stating whether tax is included). Modelo, Orisha, and Hektor publish no prices.

A market where you must ask the price

Three of four established publishers direct you to an adviser. Modelo's pricing page explains the process: fill in a form, receive a callback. Orisha's redirects to a product page without amounts. Hektor's returned nothing on verification day. The dominant model is a monthly agency subscription with optional modules for websites, valuations, electronic signatures, and mandatory training. No publisher publicly displaying per-user pricing was found, preventing comparison before giving your phone number.

What negotiators write about their application

Public French App Store reviews of Hektor concern the mobile app negotiators open during viewings. Three criticisms recur. Mobile does not do what desktop does: 'Impossible to view documents or manage electronic signatures from the app' (3 stars, October 8, 2025), and earlier: 'You cannot send property sheets to clients from the app, which is very regrettable for negotiators working more outside than in the office' (2 stars, January 31, 2023). Reauthentication recurs: 'every 2 months I have to rescan the QR code on the office computer' (2 stars, June 28, 2025). Simple requests go unanswered: 'you still cannot enter an area with a decimal, e.g. 10.25 m², when creating a room! I have reported this several times' (3 stars, September 5, 2024). A rejected decimal, reported repeatedly, shows the weight of a four-person agency in a publisher's enhancement queue.

What the professional licence requires around the software

The official factsheet on estate agency practice sets the framework: a professional licence issued by the chamber of commerce and industry, valid three years, with Transaction, Management, or Co-ownership Management endorsements, renewed subject to continuing training of at least forty-two hours over three consecutive years. A financial guarantee of €30,000 for the first two years then €110,000, for each activity. Mandatory professional liability insurance. A dedicated escrow account for any handling of funds. The mandate has a maximum three-year duration and must state its register number, remuneration and payer, assignments, and reporting conditions. The mandate register is therefore legally enforceable evidence, not a convenience. Since the reference text could not be consulted directly, have your legal adviser confirm exact requirements before fixing a template.

Between portals and accounting: what is missing and what stays closed

A live mandate register: continuous numbering, dates, mandatory information, alerts thirty days before expiry, and printable exports for inspections. Property sheets sent from a phone during a viewing without signing in again, with the send recorded in the buyer's history. Owner viewing reports, produced and timestamped after each viewing, also supporting accountability. A fee dashboard per mandate and negotiator with file status and three-month cash-flow forecasts. Finally, a multi-format listing generator: one entry producing templates for each portal and the shop window, checking mandatory information, energy performance rating, who pays fees, floor area, before export.

Publishing on listing portals involves commercial contracts and proprietary gateways: your own tool prepares and standardises the listing; it does not buy the audience. Handling funds requires the corresponding licence endorsement and a financial guarantor, which no software creates. Evidential electronic signatures go through a qualified provider, and electronic invoices through an approved platform from September 1, 2027 for very small businesses. The licence, guarantee, and insurance belong in a chamber of commerce file.

The first question Margaux asks an agency

Margaux leads scoping, and her first question in this business is not the feature list. She asks what happens when a seller calls to find out how their property is doing. Who answers, using what, how quickly, and with what record? The answer settles the rest: if the person on the phone reopens three tabs and calls the negotiator back, the product's focus becomes viewing reports and the mandate register, not the property catalogue. You answer, Victor writes a French specification, you correct and approve it, and construction follows step by step. An agency lacking the words to describe its need has nothing to learn first: questions come to it, as in the method of difficult questions. Each of the nine agents has its moment, and you retain control between them.

Where to start

Sit for twenty minutes with the negotiator conducting the most viewings and ask what happens between the end of a viewing and notifying the owner. If they describe a notebook entry, an evening call, and a message sent the next day, you have the first project, unrelated to the catalogue or distribution. The reasoning matches a garage taking back its service reminders: start with tracking nobody maintains, not the catalogue.