ANALYSING THE IMPACT OF PROPERTY AGENT REVIEW

Abstract

The emergence of disruptive technology/innovation is getting more common and incumbents in the existing business are affected by the disrupter. In the real estate agency/brokerage industry, disrupters such as Ohmyhome and Yotcha are posing a major threat to the existing players with the use of “DIY” (Do-It-Yourself) that help consumer to cut down and avoid the middleman (agent commission) fee. In response to these threats, OrangeTee, a major real estate agency in Singapore decided to launch the Property Agent Bank (PAB) on February 26, 2016 to help its agents to compete better against the disrupter. Hence, this dissertation aim to find out whether the PAB benefits the company and its agents by analysing the commission of adopters and non-adopters before and after the PAB. Statistical model such as propensity score matching (PSM) and T-test with difference-in-difference (DID) model are used. The analysis show that the PAB helps the adopters in the sample to earn 10 times more commission during the 6 months’ period from February 2016 to August 2016 as compared to the previous 6 months. When comparing the residential market performance with the OrangeTee agents (in term of rental and sales volume), the result show that both the adopters and non-adopters outperform the market by 47.87% and 12.45% in the sales and 43.09% and 21.58% in the rental market respectively. The research show that the PAB helps the company and its agents to compete against the disruptive threat with higher commission for the agent and hence more revenue for the company as well.