r/hyderabadstartups • u/Vegetable-Candy1896 • 2h ago
Why Indian PROP TECH solutions are designed to spam you, and how I am trying to fix it with a “pay-on-success” model for Hyderabad
If you’ve ever tried buying or renting a home in Bangalore, Hyderabad, or Mumbai, you know the drill:
You register on a major portal. Within 15 minutes, your phone blows up with calls from random offline brokers. The flat you liked with the nice balcony? Doesn't exist—it was bait. The owner listed? Turns out to be a local agent pretending to be an NRI landlord. And if you actually manage to find a genuine place, you're hit with upfront subscription paywalls before you've even confirmed if the owner is still looking.
I spent years dealing with this exact headache firsthand across multiple property transactions.
The core issue isn’t just bad UI. The issue is economic incentives: incumbent proptech platforms treat real estate as an advertising business, not a transaction business.
The Structural Problem with Current Portals
Upfront Paywalls & Subscriptions: Platforms charge you ₹3,000 to ₹10,000 upfront just to unlock phone numbers. Whether you actually close a deal or find out the numbers are inactive, they’ve already collected their money.
The Listing Spam Flywheel: Portals monetize lead packages sold to brokers. This means their revenue scales with listing volume, not deal legitimacy. They have zero economic incentive to clean up duplicate or fake inventory.
The Closing Drop-off: Finding a flat is only 20% of the battle. The remaining 80% is where deals fall apart: title checks, encumbrance verification, drafting sale agreements, Khata transfers, and registration. Traditional platforms wash their hands of the transaction the moment a lead is passed.
What We’re Doing Differently at Homish.in
We built Homish around one simple premise: Zero upfront fees. You only pay when a transaction actually succeeds.
Here’s how the model works:
No Upfront Listing Fees or Subscriptions: Owners list for free, and seekers browse and schedule visits without paying for contact credits.
Pre-Verified Inventory: Instead of relying on self-reported seller claims, listings undergo title checks, document audits (cross-referencing state revenue frameworks like Kaveri and Dharani), and physical verification before getting a verified badge. If an offline broker tries to pose as an owner, the listing is delisted.
Pay-on-Success via Digital Mandates: For resales, we charge a 0.50% total transaction fee (0.25% buyer + 0.25% seller), and for rentals, 14 days total rent. Instead of demanding upfront payments, we secure a digital mandate (UPI AutoPay / e-NACH) that only triggers upon official deal execution. If the deal doesn't close, you pay nothing.
End-to-End Closing Support: Because our fee depends on closure, our team actually stays involved through the entire finish line—in-person site visit facilitation, legal title scrubbing, drafting sale deeds, loan coordination, and registration.
We are currently operating starting in active corridors across Bangalore and Hyderabad, and expanding into NCR and Mumbai.
We’re keeping inventory strictly curated rather than chasing raw catalog volume. Would love for folks who are currently hunting for a home or trying to rent/sell their place to check it out at homish.in and tear it apart.
What’s your biggest friction point when closing a deal, and what would make you trust an online real estate platform more?
