New branch or acquisition? A strategic trade-off for estate agency groups

A new branch or an acquisition: the choice depends on what is scarcest in your region, qualified agents or market share. With fewer transactions ahead, growth will mainly come from market share. An acquisition buys that faster, with more integration risk. A branch of your own builds it more slowly, within your own culture and systems.

The market no longer lifts everyone

2025 was a record year. Kadaster, the Dutch Land Registry, counted around 239,000 home sales, 15.6% more than in 2024 (29 January 2026). That growth is levelling off: in the second quarter of 2026, sales were still 4% higher than a year earlier, "clearly less strongly than in previous quarters" (translated; Kadaster, 27 August 2026).

For the housing market as a whole, ABN AMRO expects 3% fewer transactions in 2026 and 4% fewer in 2027, with prices rising by 3% and 4% (according to Vastgoed Actueel, 2 April 2026). That is a sector-wide forecast, not an estate agency figure, but the consequence is clear. If you want to grow in a market that is shrinking in volume, you have to win market share from competitors.

There is room to do so. In our own count of 4,386 estate agency organisations (23 August 2026), 88.2% have one branch. How that fragmentation will play out over the coming years is covered in consolidation among Dutch estate agencies. For anyone who runs their agency as a business, the question is not whether you win market share, but by which route.

Four routes side by side

The NVM is the largest Dutch association of estate agents. The routes are not mutually exclusive. Burgersdijk Makelaars acquired De Ruiter Makelaars in Almere and, in the same announcement, announced a new office in 't Gooi (Burgersdijk, 4 February 2025). De Ruiter continues under the Burgersdijk name, and clients keep their regular contact person. There, acquisition and organic expansion ran in parallel.

Organic: people are the bottleneck

A branch of your own looks like the controllable route: no purchase price, no unfamiliar culture, no second CRM. The constraint is people. According to the RIGO report for the Ministry of Housing and Spatial Planning (VRO) (February 2026), Independent Broker calls the NVM rule that every new branch must have a registered estate agent-valuer a brake on growth.

That rule coincides with a shrinking pool. Registrations in the RM Wonen register fell from 4,849 in 2020 to 4,366 in 2025 (RIGO, based on VastgoedCert). The salary survey by 2B Connected (November 2025) shows the share of starters among estate agents falling from 37% in 2021 to 10% in 2025. Both figures are specific to estate agency; the second comes from a self-selecting sample and is an indication.

What an extra branch costs is less clear than you might expect. We found no substantiated cost estimate, from rent and staff to the ramp-up time to break-even, from banks, advisers or trade journals. The only hard figure is old: in 2012, the NVM charged a €7,500 entry fee for each additional branch (NMa, Marktscan Woningmakelaardij, March 2012). We could not verify the current rates. So you build the business case with your own figures.

Acquiring: market share with a warning label

An acquisition buys in one go what a branch of your own takes years to build: a name in the neighbourhood, current sales instructions, a team with the right registrations. That makes the route attractive, precisely now that qualified agents are scarce.

The downside is uncertainty about what you are buying. There is no current valuation benchmark specific to estate agencies. For SMEs as a whole, the Overname Barometer by Brookz and Dealsuite reports an average EBITDA multiple of 5.0 in the first half of 2026, and 3.6 for small businesses with around €200,000 EBITDA (via MenA.nl, 17 August 2026). Those are SME figures, not estate agency figures. An agency where sales instructions depend on one person is probably below that.

Then there is the structure. In the SME deals Brookz analysed, 38% included an earn-out and only 9% were paid in full at closing (Accountancy Vanmorgen, 13 October 2025). Which questions to ask before making an offer is covered in acquiring an estate agency.

Merging: scale without a purchase price

A merger shares the risk, and with it the control. The press shows three variants:

• New name: YLO Makelaardij and Fuchs Makelaardij continued together as FYN Makelaardij, with "optimised work processes" (translated; Sittard-Geleen Nieuws, 6 October 2023).
• Regional role: Salland Makelaardij in Raalte and Rick Maatman in Zwolle merged on 1 January 2025, keeping both offices. Maatman: "We see that many of our clients are widening their search area" (translated; Salland Centraal, 29 September 2024).
• Regional player: Since 1 March 2026, Boek & Offermans and Burgstate have continued as Ovida Makelaars. All six branches remain open; the aim is "one larger player in the Limburg property market" (translated; Parkstad Actueel, 1 March 2026).

What follows such a decision (brand name, systems and client data) is covered in the first hundred days after an acquisition.

Franchise: a model with a history

A franchise requires little capital to get in. According to De Nationale Franchisegids (2026), iQ Makelaars charges an entry fee from €7,500, a franchise fee of between 6% and 25% and a €250 monthly marketing fee, with an exclusive territory of around 150,000 inhabitants. The franchise grew from 7 franchise branches in 2024 to 15 in 2026. For RE/MAX, the Nederlandse Franchise Vereniging (Dutch Franchise Association) cites a €15,000 entry fee and a 9% fee.

The risk is well documented historically. RE/MAX shrank from 89 offices in 2007 to 23 in 2012, and at Hypodomus fifteen franchise branches went bankrupt in July 2011 (Vastgoed Actueel, June 2012). A franchise that grows fast can shrink just as fast, and your brand shrinks with it.

The fifth route: adding services

Besides more branches, you can generate more revenue per client. The large groups already do this: Alpina offers estate agency, mortgages, insurance and pensions under one roof, and Vivantus lists estate agency, mortgages, insurance and new-build. At Mulder Makelaardij in Nijverdal, Alpina bought the estate agency, an insurance firm and a mortgage firm in one move (De Jong & Laan, undated).

How much revenue mortgages, valuations or property management generate on average within an estate agency is not published anywhere. That, too, is a finding: if you choose this route, you have to measure the return yourself.

Mortgages as a lever, within the Wft

Mortgages are the obvious extension, and the only one where the law is directly involved. In its publication on intermediation (September 2014), the AFM (Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets) stated that "merely passing on the client's contact details to a provider, without other relevant client information" (translated) does not count as intermediation. Contact details comprise at least name, address, place of residence, phone number and email address. If you pass on more, such as income or date of birth, the AFM considers it intermediation, and a licence is required. A fee, for example a lead fee, points to an agreement according to the AFM.

Article 86c(1) of the BGfo (Decree on the Conduct of Business Supervision of Financial Undertakings) prohibits commission for intermediating or advising on mortgage credit. Paragraph 2(e) exempts commission that an intermediary or adviser, other than a provider or authorised agent, pays to another intermediary or adviser. A fee from a bank is therefore not covered by that exemption. How this applies to your arrangement is a legal question: have it assessed by a lawyer specialising in the Wft (Dutch Financial Supervision Act). The practical side is covered in referring leads to your mortgage adviser.

Whichever route you choose, measure it per branch

Every route is an investment built on an assumption: that the new branch will sign sales instructions within a certain time, that the acquired portfolio will stay, that referrals to the mortgage adviser will pay off. A director who knows the numbers records that assumption upfront and tests it every quarter.

That takes more than a revenue total. You want to see, per branch and per source, where leads come from and how many become a sales instruction, and which referrals earn a commission. KeyVue reports conversion by source, branch and agent, and records referrals to advisers and colleagues with the commission attached. You can see how that works on the product page. The wider growth story is on growing as an estate agency group.

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