Revolutionizing Real Estate!
The real estate industry plays an integral role in shaping economies and societies, providing essential infrastructure for living, working, and commerce. As cities evolve, the demand for more sustainable, innovative, and customer-centric real estate solutions continues to rise. The industry is witnessing a shift towards digitalization, offering more efficient and accessible ways for individuals and businesses to interact with the property market. Leaders within this space are driving these transformations by using technology, reforming customer experiences, and meeting the growing demand for diverse housing solutions.
We are interviewing one such leader, Monika Pirslin, CEO and Founder of Nya Boendet, a marketing platform and housing site that was launched in Sweden last year. Under her guidance, the company has quickly gained traction for its unique approach to matching home seekers with properties. Monika’s approach is hands-on and innovative, driven by her passion for improving the home search process. She is transforming the industry through her focus on customer satisfaction and operational efficiency, ensuring her platform meets and exceeds the expectations of its users.
In Swedish, “Nya Boendet” means “New Living.” They feature more than 25,000 nationwide properties across all types of housing, with a niche focus on new development. Approximately 40% of the yearly housing market consists of newly built homes, and Nya Boendet gathers new homes in one place to make it easy for customers to find their new homes, whether they want to buy or rent. Like Tinder, Nya Boendet matches the properties listed on the platform with home seekers via its MAAS service (marketing as a service).
Let’s delve into Monika’s innovative journey in real estate:
Bridging the Gap in the Housing Market
The foundation of Nya Boendet lies in creating value for multiple parties. Monika has always been driven by creating value. She was successful in sales in the telecom industry and was recruited into the real estate sector. She wanted to level up sales and became curious about real estate brokerage. She was educated as a real estate agent while working at a small real estate agency in Stockholm that primarily dealt with new development, and she fell in love with it immediately.
New development requires greater creativity, long-term relationships, and the ability to realize visions—it perfectly matches her qualities. Her next step was to start working at one of the largest residential development companies in the Nordics. Product, sales, marketing, and communications are her expertise. After several years with some large companies, she decided in 2016 to start her first business, c/o Properties. She possessed unique expertise, the talent to execute, and an enormous drive.
That combination is worth paying for, and many companies desired the value she brought. All the knowledge, perceived demand, and the lack of a comprehensive solution became the start for Nya Boendet. Since people do not have a relationship with brands that create homes, it is impossible to know where to find them and what they offer.
Everybody has a relation to car brands, but when it comes to housing, you only look for your wanted location and what is offered there. That is Nya Boendet’s purpose: to show the market. Nya Boendet collects the brands, shows their properties, and matches them with people who want to live there.
Prioritizing Customer Satisfaction
As the CEO of Nya Boendet, it is important to Monika that all parts of the business deliver strong results. The most important thing is that customers are satisfied, and that satisfaction is continuously improved—for bothexisting customers, new customers, and all users of the service. The same goes for investors.
Efficiently Matching Home Seekers with Their New Home
By continuously optimizing, developing, and improving its service, Nya Boendet has tested most channels and knows what works and the levels required for success. Nowadays, it primarily offers MAAS (marketing as a service) to new developers and property owners. For home seekers, it acts like Tinder, matching them with the desired homes in the areas they want to live in.
With around 25,000 nationwide properties on its platform, it is important that these properties reach the market. Listing properties on Nya Boendet ensures they reach the target group who want to live there. Nya Boendet makes it easy for both parties to connect and do business.
Creating a Comprehensive Solution
The most rewarding aspect of her role at Nya Boendet is the creation. Going from her idea of Nya Boendet when she was “on the other side of the table” and needed a service like this—just like all her industry colleagues—to building it. This has been reflected in everything from the logo to the technical platform and tone of voice in their communication.
Her expertise lies in creating a complete solution, from idea to reality. For example, the technical platform wasn’t bespoke by a CTO or someone with technical expertise; it was created by her purely from a business perspective, based on what the real estate business requires, what customers need, and how the user experience should be. As a result, it’s a comprehensive and full-scale solution for both their clients and users.
On Nya Boendet, home seekers can understand what the market offers, compare options, and make decisions about their new home. If they need help with a mortgage or selling their own home, Nya Boendet covers that, too.
For years, she believed that one of the major housing websites would create this, but they didn’t. She has great confidence in her ability to execute, so she decided to take charge and build it herself. The willingness to try new things to develop the service is essential. In her world, there are no failures, only lessons. They allow constant learning, pushing boundaries, and raising the bar to always improve and never stagnate.
Solving a constant need for homes
Nya Boendet’s service is divided into two target groups: B2B and B2C. Its clients are new developers and property owners with a common need—to rent out or sell their properties. This is solved by matching them to their customers in a targeted way through its marketing service.
By using Nya Boendet, they save about 50% of their marketing budget, get a ‘one-stop shop’ for all their marketing and selling needs, and are automatically in the right environment where home seekers are. It’s the most time- and cost-efficient tool on the market. Nya Boendet is present where the customers are digitally generating leads that are sent to their real estate agents and rental agents.
For B2C, it is about constantly being present, showcasing, and matching homes where customers want to live. Life is always ongoing, home needs are constant, and it is the different phases of life that make people move. They move out of their parents’ homes, move in together, grow, separate, and start new chapters—all of which require a home.
Integrating Work with Lifestyle
Monika believes, “Happiness is a choice,” and all her decisions are based on being happy. She does what she loves and loves what she does; therefore, there is no need to separate things. What she does is her lifestyle, and she doesn’t see it as a job since she loves it. She recommends everyone find out what they love to do and pursue it. “Happiness is the highest level of success. You can’t burn out if you do what you love,” she quoted.
Staying Curious and Informed
She is chronically curious and ensures she feeds herself with what she needs to constantly stay on top of her game. Since she engages with what she is truly interested in every day, it is not difficult for her to stay updated. There are countless ways to find inspiration, and it is all about managing the flow in a good way and embracing what is relevant to the business.
Advice for Starting a Business in Real Estate or Marketing
Monika finds that most people who want to launch something do not recognize the importance of marketing and the substantial budget it requires. She highlights, “Just because something amazing has been created and a website is published, it doesn’t mean customers will automatically find it. It takes time to build a brand.”
Her recommendation is “To have both financial and mental endurance. It’s exciting when things move quickly and smoothly, but there are many factors related to growing a brand and achieving results that cannot be controlled. Focus on what can be influenced and turned into success within the available resources.”
She suggests daring more. “Not everything needs to be fully planned; often, falling behind is the result of overplanning. Learning by doing with the right intention and communication leads to success, often even better than the plan. When the market and customer are well understood, the right choices for the business will be easily made.”
Future Goals and Industry Leadership
Her future goal for Nya Boendet is to become the obvious service within the industry, develop the SaaS models to add even more value, apply more AI to the platform, and become the most valuable partner for their customers. Nya Boendet is compared to brands that have been around for 10-20 years, and many forget what they were after 1-2 years. Growing a brand successfully takes time.
“Since I created this for the industry, I engage them in our development through our advisory board that brings all their needs to our plan of development—according to what the actual needs of our customers are. It’s important for me to listen to what they want and need because we are the partner to help them succeed.”
The platform is scalable and makes it easy to expand internationally. The housing market is very generic in the Nordics, and the platform can easily be applied in neighboring countries—either, like what is done in Sweden, or as a no-brand solution applied to already existing marketplaces. In markets with a lot of new development, such as Manhattan or Dubai, it is equally applicable and even easier, as the target audience is smaller since everyone works with buying agents, unlike in Sweden.
Also, since they have many customers with commercial properties, they will also be listed in the future and use the same service to match businesses with their need for commercial properties.
“We will revolutionize our industry like Tesla did for car sales.”
For Monika, it has always been a great honor to work with something as important as a home. Family and health are the most important, and next on the list is your home—your sanctuary. Everything from shaping how the properties should look to tailoring them to target audiences, marketing them, selling them, and ensuring customer satisfaction is a process that she highly values and wants to continue to engage in and develop.
Monika always wants to be the best version of herself and is driven to constantly develop. If she leads Nya Boendet, the same drive will naturally be embraced in the company’s development.
Check it out at nyaboendet.se.
