They are called "123 brokers", "realbest", "house gold", etc. For about two years, so-called "broker comparison portals" are doing their mischief on the Internet.
The cool startups, in the meantime we counted over two hundred, all have a business model. They buy ads on Google and place themselves among the first search results when looking for a broker in a particular city.
The advertising statements are almost identical: "we are looking for the best broker", "objective broker comparison", "all brokers have been checked by us" etc. etc. The consumer naturally thinks with these statements that it is an institution like "Stiftung Warentest" or similar act, but far from it. None of the comparison portals has ever attempted to compare real estate agents with objective evaluation criteria; with around 25.000 real estate agents in Germany, none of the companies could do this. The business model works differently: at the same time, these companies contact all brokers who can be found and sell them so-called "leads", i.e. customers who have got lost on the portals, with different price models (percentage participation and / or monthly amount). So the customer does not get the best broker at his request, but the broker who paid to the portal or - unfortunately we have to say this about some of our colleagues - who was stupid to pay. Our advice: hands off!