After the acquisition: the first hundred days of an estate agency integration

The first hundred days after an acquisition decide whether you keep the portfolio you bought. Settle the brand early, secure your people before they start to doubt, merge systems and client data only once the GDPR basis is sound, and from day one measure by source, branch and agent whether the acquisition delivers what the business case promised.

The integration is the real deal

When you buy an estate agency, you are not buying a building. You are buying a flow of leads, a network of relationships and the people who maintain those relationships. None of those assets sit on the balance sheet, and they can walk out of the door within a few months.

That is why the press releases read so alike. "Clients keep their regular point of contact" (Burgersdijk, February 2025, translated). "The existing branches will be retained" (Ovida, March 2026, translated). "Nothing has changed in our service" (Van Dorsten Makelaars, November 2024, translated). They are reassurances to clients and, implicitly, to the agency's own team.

We cover due diligence, valuation and deal structure in acquiring an estate agency. Whether an acquisition is the right route, or a branch of your own, is covered in new branch or acquisition. This piece is about what comes next. For the wider growth story, see growing as an estate agency group.

Two brand models, two kinds of risk

The first strategic choice is the brand, and the Dutch market shows both extremes.

Vivantus bought the shares of Van Dorsten Makelaars in Meppel and became the legal owner from January 2025; the brand remained (Trots op Lokaal Ondernemen, 4 November 2024). Van de Steege Makelaarsgroep chose the same model when it acquired Barnhoorn Vermeer in Badhoevedorp: the label stays and the team moves across (Van de Steege, 16 February 2026).

Alpina went the other way, aiming for a place among the top 5 estate agency service providers in the Netherlands. The transition was phased: the last Heilbron insurance office moved over in June 2023, and the estate agencies in Doetinchem, Duiven and Zevenaar in September 2023. In search results, the Funda (the dominant Dutch property portal) profile of the Duiven office still appears as "Alpina Duiven (Voorheen Heilbron Makelaardij)", meaning "formerly Heilbron Makelaardij". Our interpretation: reviews and search visibility are tied to an old name, and a change of brand does not carry them across automatically.

Neither model is better. But the choice has to be made in the first month, because everything after it depends on it: the website, the lead forms, source tracking and reporting.

People and culture come before systems

The integration literature agrees on where things go wrong. Bain & Company (January 2023) reports that 75% of acquirers struggle with culture problems that require serious intervention, even though 80% put culture on the agenda early. That covers acquisitions in all sectors, not estate agencies specifically. Bain: "The best integrators address fault lines early. Those that wait until teams are openly complaining have a much larger problem to solve."

Research from MIT Sloan (January 2019) shows that 33% of acquired employees leave within a year, against 12% of comparable new hires. The context is very different: it concerns American tech start-ups between 1990 and 2011. The figure does not translate one to one, but the direction matters for a profession in which the relationship sits with the agent.

For anyone taking over a team, the practical translation is:

• Speak to every agent and back-office employee in the first two weeks, in person rather than by circular.
• Agree retention terms with the people who carry the most sales instructions.
• Keep the selling owner involved for a period. In SMEs, according to JM Partners, a seller typically stays on for 3, 6 or 12 months (an SME-wide figure, not one for estate agencies).
• Name the differences in working practice explicitly, such as how quickly a lead is followed up and who carries out a valuation.

Systems and CRM: two environments, one way of working

In most cases the acquired agency runs its own environment, often Realworks or Kolibri. Merging them is the step about which least is known. We found no public documentation or case studies on merging two Realworks environments, or on a migration between Kolibri and Realworks in a merger. The Realworks FAQ only mentions individual import functions.

Expect integrations that have to be rebuilt as well. According to web agencies, Realworks is phasing out older API endpoints in favour of version 3. What you arrange yourself as an agency when connecting an integration is covered in connecting the Realworks API.

The order we recommend: first one way of working, then one system. Agree the same list of source names, the same pipeline stages and the same definition of a sales instruction across all branches. A technical migration on top of two different ways of working produces one system with two meanings.

Client data and the GDPR

The client and contact files are a large part of what you are buying, and that is exactly where the GDPR applies. ICTRecht (November 2019) writes that in an acquisition the buyer can usually rely on legitimate interest, provided the data continues to be used for the same purpose and clients are informed. According to ICTRecht, do not automatically add acquired data to your own database, and newsletter recipients keep their right to unsubscribe.

That privacy also counts in disciplinary law became clear in April 2025: the Tuchtcommissie Vastgoedprofessionals (the disciplinary committee for property professionals) fined an estate agent €500 because an employee named a complainant's surname in a reply to a Google review. How the GDPR plays out in your acquisition is a matter for case-by-case advice: have it reviewed by a privacy lawyer.

The hundred-day plan

The KPIs the board wants to see from day one

An acquisition is a hypothesis: that the acquired agency's inflow continues and that the sales instructions follow. You can only test that hypothesis if you measure the same figures in the same way before and after the integration.

A director who knows the numbers can see in the first quarter whether a branch is lagging, and whether that is down to the market or to follow-up. How to build that kind of overview is covered in the quarterly report for a multi-branch agency.

A group with several brands has one extra requirement here: the figures have to add up across brands. KeyVue gives a group one overview across all its branches and brands, with conversion by source, branch and agent, and the referral commission. See how it works on the product page.

Frequently asked questions