The Empty Chair

Preface

In the first memo I described an empty chair. A deed signing in Cascais, five chairs at the desk, and the fifth, where the agent used to sit, unoccupied. That memo explained why the chair will stay empty. This one explains how you walk to it.

I am writing it because the question I receive most often, from owners, from developers, from investors, is always the same one wearing three different verbs. Can I sell my home without an agent? Should I? Will I manage it safely?

I spent twenty years on the side that pays the commissions, with more than EUR 1.6 billion in transactions managed. For the first years I assumed the answer was no. The years that followed taught me the answer had always been yes, and that what was missing was neither courage nor knowledge. It was infrastructure.

This memo answers all three questions with numbers, with the six steps of the transaction, and with an honest account of what changed. It is not a manifesto against mediation. It is a market manual for the alternative that now exists.

Can you sell a home without an estate agent?

Yes. In Portugal and Spain, as across the European Union, no law obliges an owner to hire an estate agency or a broker to sell a property. A private sale is fully legal. The owner lists, shows, negotiates and signs; the public deed is executed before a notary, with a lawyer coordinating the documentation where the owner chooses one. What the law demands is the truth of the documents and the form of the act. It does not demand a commercial intermediary.

The model deserves its proper name: the direct transaction. A direct transaction is one in which owner and buyer meet, negotiate and close without commercial mediation, supported by the professionals the law actually foresees, the notary and, where chosen, the lawyer, and by infrastructure that runs the remaining steps.

The real question was never one of legality. It was one of execution. For decades, selling without an agent meant doing six different jobs by hand, with tools for none of them. That is what changed.

What it costs to sell with an agent, and what it costs without

Start with the arithmetic, because the arithmetic carries the rest.

Across Portugal and Spain, typical brokerage commissions run between 5% and 8% of the sale price, plus VAT where it applies. The comparison assumes the bottom step, 5%, which is the traditional model's best case. On a EUR 300,000 home that is EUR 15,000, which with Portuguese VAT becomes EUR 18,450. The owner pays it, and it is easy to forget that, in practice, the amount lives inside the price the buyer carries.

Now the other column. The real infrastructure cost of a transaction, the sum of what the State and the genuinely necessary professionals charge, sits around EUR 3,300: certificates and registrations, legal and documentary coordination, and the deed itself. Between EUR 3,300 of real cost and the EUR 15,000 to 24,000 charged before VAT lies a multiple of four to seven times. In the first memo I called it a toll. The word stands.

Before the table convinces too quickly, three caveats. VAT at 23% is added on both sides, because rigour demands both columns carry the tax. The EUR 500,000 and 700,000 lines are there because these are perfectly ordinary prices in the capitals, and because a percentage commission grows with the price without the work growing with it. And the direct-transaction line is no longer the zero-cost do-it-yourself sale; it is the transaction executed on professional infrastructure, with verification, contracts, protected payment and closing coordination included, paid only when the transaction happens. Anyone who wants the fully manual model can approach the EUR 3,300 of raw cost, at the price of weeks of their own time and the risk described below. And the figures shift from country to country; the logic does not. European brokerage commissions drain, depending on methodology, between EUR 175 and 275 billion a year. In Iberia alone they exceed EUR 7 billion, spread across roughly 750,000 annual transactions.

The table leaves one question hanging, and it is the only one that matters. If the difference is this large, why does everyone keep paying the agency lines?

What the table does not measure: exclusivity

And the table only measures money. The exclusivity contract, standard practice in mediation, charges in another currency: autonomy. Signing exclusivity means depositing the transaction of the largest asset of a lifetime in the hands of a third party who, quite often, represents both sides of the deal. It is the agent who chooses which offers to show, and when. It is the agent who decides who visits the home. It is the agent who runs the calendar according to the interests of their portfolio, which are not necessarily the owner's.

And it is the owner who waits for a call that does not come. The attentive service promised at signing becomes, once the mandate is locked, one more property in the shop window waiting for leads from the listing. Anyone who has sold a home this way knows the scene.

In the direct transaction there is no exclusivity because there is nothing to lock. The owner sees every offer, decides who enters and when, and keeps the freedom to change course at any moment. The saving in the table is the visible argument; getting the control back is worth more.

Why selling without an agent used to be hard, and no longer is

Because a property transaction is not one job. It is six.

List. Visit. Verify. Sign. Pay. Close. Six steps, and for decades not a single professional tool existed that ran them end to end for a private owner. The portals solved the first step and stopped there: they sell audience, not transactions. Everything else stayed in the seller's hands. Scheduling and hosting viewings with strangers. Confirming who actually owns the property and who must sign. Drafting a promissory contract that protects both sides. Moving a deposit worth tens of thousands of euros between people who have just met. Coordinating certificates, deadlines and the booking of the deed.

The agency was never hired for bringing buyers. It was hired for being the only packaged way to do the other five jobs.

And one datum dismantles the sector's founding myth: 92% of buyers start their home search online. Demand was never the problem. Selling direct never failed for lack of buyers; it failed for lack of infrastructure. The middleman was not a profession in the proper sense of the word. It was a patch over infrastructure nobody had built.

We built it. A platform that runs all six steps: the listing with professional photography, viewings hosted safely, verification of people and properties against the official registries, contracts signed with qualified digital signatures, the deposit moving through a protected banking circuit, and lawyer-coordinated closing all the way to the deed, which remains the in-person act the law provides for. The owner sets the price, receives every offer and chooses. The platform sells nobody's home. It runs the transaction of the person who does.

The step that changed everything: when verification became proof

Of the six steps, five were work. One was the wall.

Verifying an owner, their co-owners and every required authorisation, marital status, property regime, a spouse's consent, the charges registered against the property. It is the work that consumes weeks of lawyer time in a traditional transaction. It is also why selling without an agent used to sound like risk: without this layer, each side is trusting the other's word.

We automated this work from the official public registries. No market API existed, or exists, for these sources; the connection was built from scratch. And one distinction is worth the whole memo: the platform does not merely confirm a claim against the registry. It retrieves the certified document itself. More than verify: prove. Verification can be disputed. Proof cannot.

The practical result is measured in time and in disputes that never come to exist. What took weeks now takes minutes, and every transaction rests on official documents obtained at the source, not on photocopies traded over email. It was this step that made the direct transaction not merely possible but safer than the process it replaces. In a traditional transaction, the depth of verification depends on who performs it and how much time they have. On infrastructure, it is the same in every transaction, every time, because it is in the code.

1. List

A home listing is a product: photography, copy, price and exposure. By hand, it means shooting, writing, publishing on a portal and fielding calls from the curious and from agents hunting mandates. On infrastructure, it means a professional photo session, a listing published with verified information, and a filter at the door: only identified buyers reach the next step. The price always belongs to the owner. Listing costs nothing; the infrastructure earns only per transaction.

2. Visit

The viewing is the most human and most delicate moment of the process: strangers inside your home. By hand, the owner manages calendar, presence and safety alone. On infrastructure, viewings are scheduled on the platform and hosted by trained professionals with clear identification, so the owner neither has to be present nor open the door to anyone unverified. The buyer visits with dignity. The owner keeps control without carrying the logistics.

3. Verify

The heart, described above. Identity of the parties under enhanced verification, title and charges confirmed in the official registries, marital status and the consents of everyone whose consent the law requires. By hand, this is the phase of weeks and surprises. On infrastructure, it is the phase of minutes and certified documents. It is the step that protects the buyer as much as the owner, which is why no offer moves forward without it.

4. Sign

In Portugal, the promissory contract, the CPCV, fixes price, deadlines, deposit and conditions; Spain's contrato de arras plays the same role. By hand, it requires a lawyer to draft it and two calendars to align. On infrastructure, the contract is generated from verified data and signed with a qualified digital signature, fully binding under the European eIDAS regulation. Three real transactions have already closed on these rails, the fastest reaching the deed thirty days after listing.

5. Pay

The deposit is the moment tens of thousands of euros change hands between people who met three weeks ago. By hand, it is a bank transfer running on trust. On infrastructure, the amount moves through a protected banking circuit, processed on institutional payment rails, documented and tied to the contract. Nobody asks anybody for an act of faith.

6. Close

The public deed is, and remains, an in-person act before a notary. No serious platform promises otherwise, and the reader should distrust any that does. What infrastructure does is everything around the act: gathering certificates, validating deadlines, coordinating the lawyer who accompanies the parties, and leaving the appointment ready. Closing is the step where the State enters the room. Infrastructure's job is to make sure that, when it does, everything is on the table.

Is it safe? The five classic frauds and what happens to them

The safety question deserves an answer in the negative: what tends to go wrong in an unprotected private sale, and what infrastructure does to each risk.

The false owner, listing what is not theirs, falls at title verification performed at the source, before any viewing. The forgotten spouse or co-owner, appearing after the contract to void it, is caught upstream, in the verification of marital status, property regime and consents. The property with undisclosed mortgages or attachments does not survive the certificate retrieved directly from the registry, instead of the seller's word. The deposit sent to the wrong account, or to the right account of the wrong person, has no path through a payment circuit where funds move tied to a contract and to verified identities. And the phantom buyer, occupying viewings and calendars with neither means nor intent, is held at the identification filter at the door.

None of this is brochure theory. It is the reason the architecture exists. In a traditional transaction, these risks are managed by human diligence, which varies; on infrastructure, they are removed by design, the same way, in every transaction. It is fair to ask whether selling without an agent is safe. After seeing the process, the question inverts: what verification did your last purchase close with?

Why now

Four clocks struck at once, and none of them runs backwards.

The law went digital. The eIDAS regulation and national digital identity schemes gave qualified signatures full legal force across the European Union, and the contracts of a property transaction are now signed with complete validity without a single trip.

The registries opened. The official sources of title and tax standing became digitally reachable in Portugal, one of the few European countries where centralised registries make proof automatable. That is where the infrastructure became buildable, and that is why it started there.

The buyer changed. Most buyers are now digital by default: they start online, compare online, and accept ever less that the largest purchase of their lives is the only one that forces them back to paper and telephone.

And the signal came from abroad. In the United States, the post-NAR settlement is unwinding, in real time, the fixed-commission structure that sustained the model for a century. The collapse of the model stopped being a thesis. It became news.

When the law, the registries, the buyer and the international precedent all point the same way, the variable left is who builds first.

The questions that remain

How do I know the right price without an agent? The same way the agent knows: comparables. Actual sale prices in the area, floor area, condition and exposure. The difference is that this data is now within the owner's reach, and a price set with data and without hurry is worth more than a price suggested by someone paid to close fast.

Can I negotiate on my own? Better than you think, for a simple reason: you receive every offer, unfiltered. In the traditional model, offers pass through an intermediary who represents both sides and decides what to show and when. In a direct transaction, the information arrives whole, and whoever holds the whole information negotiates as an equal.

How long does it take? It depends on price and market, as it always did. What shortens is the administrative half: verification that took weeks happens in minutes, and the path from contract to deed is coordinated. The fastest transaction closed on these rails went from listing to deed in thirty days, and it can happen in half that time: it depends only on the parties and on how quickly the documentation comes together.

What about foreign buyers? They are the strongest argument for verification, not against it. Identity confirmed under enhanced checks, funds moving through a documented banking circuit, contracts signed with qualified signatures valid across the Union. A verified international buyer is a good buyer; an unverified one is a risk under any model.

Does the notary disappear? No, nor should it. The notary and the lawyer are the intermediation the law provides for and the architecture respects. The deed is in person and will remain so for as long as the State so determines. What disappears is the commercial layer that charged a percentage for what sat between the listing and the deed.

What if I simply prefer to delegate everything to an agency? A legitimate choice, and some owners will always make it, above all those who value delegating entirely. This memo does not argue that mediation will vanish. It argues that it has stopped being obligatory in practice, as it never was in law, and that the alternative has become cheaper and better verified.

What does it cost to try? Listing costs nothing. The infrastructure's remuneration, EUR 2,000 fixed plus 2% of the price, with a EUR 4,000 minimum on the variable part, carries VAT and exists only per transaction: on a EUR 300,000 home, EUR 9,840 with VAT, against EUR 18,450 in the traditional model. If the home does not transact, the cost was zero. The exact numbers for your case are in the simulator at turnki.eu.

What documents do I need to sell a home? The usual set in Portugal: the permanent land registry certificate, the property tax document (caderneta predial), the use licence, the energy certificate and, depending on the property, the housing technical file and condominium documentation. It is paperwork that intimidates on paper and stops intimidating when the infrastructure gathers and validates it for you: that is precisely the job of the verification step.

Is signing exclusivity with an agency worth it? That is each owner's decision, best taken knowing what is handed over: control of the offers, the viewings and the calendar, for months, to someone who may also represent the buyer. The direct transaction exists precisely so that this trade stops being the price of selling.

Does this already work, or is it a promise? It works. Three real transactions closed end to end on this infrastructure, through three different channels, the third organically, with the deed thirty days later. Ninety-five percent of users, across more than forty test sessions, preferred the process, and 217 lawyers signed up organically to accompany transactions. The rails exist. The market just has not noticed yet.

What this means

One final clarification, in the line of the first memo, because intellectual honesty is what gives the rest its value.

This is not a manifesto against intermediation. Some intermediation is structurally necessary: the lawyers remain, the notaries remain, for reasons the architecture respects and does not attempt to replace. Nor is this a forecast of the death of agencies. Many will continue to operate, above all in segments where the owner actively chooses to delegate. The claim is a different one. The position no longer governs the transaction. The infrastructure does.

The chair from the first memo is still at the desk, in Cascais and in every notary office in the country. The difference is that we now know exactly how to walk to it: six steps, all executable, all verified, all cheaper. The middleman only ever needed one thing nobody had built. Software.

Methodological note: commission figures use the range practised in Portugal and Spain (4% to 6%, plus VAT where applicable) on a EUR 300,000 example; the transaction's infrastructure cost aggregates certificates, registrations, legal coordination and the deed at current values; the European and Iberian estimates follow the methodology of the memo Europe's Last Toll Booth. This memo is market information, not legal advice; in every transaction, the parties are accompanied by a lawyer.

Hugo Ferreira
CEO, Turnki