Aviv Ilinec, Founder of IMMO-MALIN: "Real Estate Must Evolve With Its Time"

After more than 18 years in real estate, Aviv Ilinec decided to rethink the codes of the traditional agency. With IMMO-MALIN, he is building a model that combines human expertise, reduced fees and new technology. Artificial intelligence, enhanced photography, immersive video and digital tools: we wanted to talk with him about this modern vision of real estate, where innovation is put to work for sellers.

I started my journey in real estate in 2012, co-founding Bonapart Immobilier. Over more than 15 years, I got to discover every facet of this business: supporting many sellers and buyers, building a company, and above all understanding what clients actually need. Over the years, I also noticed that our industry had changed a great deal, particularly in consumer habits and digital tools, but that the economic model of real estate agencies had stayed fairly traditional. Today, clients are better informed, property searches almost always start online, technology can automate a large share of the work — and yet the fees charged often remain very high. So I asked myself a fairly simple question: why not use all these changes to offer a real estate service that is more efficient, more modern and, above all, more affordable? That question is where IMMO-MALIN came from.

Our philosophy rests on one conviction: lowering fees must never mean lowering the quality of service. We wanted to build an agency able to offer a complete service, with close human support, while cutting agency fees in half — or even by two-thirds in some situations. We use technology to streamline how we operate, reduce structural costs, and reinvest in what actually creates value for our clients: listing visibility, the quality of how a property is presented, marketing, and support all the way to the final signature. At IMMO-MALIN, we are not simply trying to sell a property. We are trying to sell it under the best possible conditions, within a controlled timeframe and with an optimised net amount for the seller.

Artificial intelligence is at the heart of our development. I'm convinced that real estate is currently going through a transformation comparable to the one it experienced with the arrival of listing portals. We chose not to be swept along by this shift, but to fully build it into our model. AI lets us work on property presentation, communication, content creation, real estate data analysis and the optimisation of certain administrative tasks. We are also developing solutions to better track mandates, more quickly identify listings that need commercial action, and smooth out communication with our clients. The idea is absolutely not to replace the real estate agent with artificial intelligence — quite the opposite: we want to give the agent better tools so they can spend more time on what actually creates value in our profession, namely advice, negotiation and the human relationship.

Artificial intelligence must work for the real estate agent, not the other way around.

Because the first viewing of a property now happens on a screen. Before even contacting an agency, a buyer has usually already browsed dozens of listings. So we have just a few seconds to catch their attention and make them want to see more. At IMMO-MALIN, we place particular importance on how a property is presented: professional photography, virtual tours, 2D floor plans, digital home staging and video content. Artificial intelligence lets us go further still, notably by offering layout projections, helping buyers picture a property's potential, or creating more immersive visual material. An empty apartment, for example, can be hard to read. With virtual home staging, we can show how it could be furnished, without the seller taking on heavy expenses. Video is also a genuine communication lever: it lets us tell a story around a property, presenting its volumes, atmosphere and surroundings in a way a standard listing cannot. We are gradually building AI-assisted video creation tools into our communication strategy, both for showcasing properties and for our educational content on social media. Our goal, however, stays the same: use these technologies to showcase properties, never to mislead buyers. Virtual projections must always be clearly identified as such, and a property's real characteristics must always be respected.

I think a real estate agency can no longer just publish a listing and wait for the phone to ring. Real estate communication has to evolve with how people actually use media. Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and other platforms let us reach a wider audience, but they also let us build a different kind of relationship with our clients. Through our videos, we try to explain real estate topics that are sometimes complex in simple terms: agency fees, diagnostics, co-ownership rules, negotiation, financing, or the different steps of a sale. We are also working on more innovative visual formats, using images and videos generated or enhanced with artificial intelligence. I want IMMO-MALIN to be seen not just as a real estate agency, but also as a modern, approachable, educational brand that helps make real estate information accessible to everyone.

We completely rethought our organisation. The traditional agency model often comes with significant fixed costs, which naturally end up being passed on in the fees charged to clients. At IMMO-MALIN, we favour a leaner structure, a network of independent sales agents, and smart use of digital tools. We aim to automate whatever can be automated, without ever sacrificing human support. This organisation lets us offer considerably reduced fees while keeping premium services: professional photography, multi-portal distribution, listing promotion options, virtual tours, commercial support and administrative follow-up all the way through to the sale. Here's a concrete example: on a €300,000 transaction, a traditional agency charging 5% represents €15,000 in fees. At IMMO-MALIN, depending on the plan chosen, those fees can be significantly lower — the difference can represent several thousand euros in savings for the seller. I believe an agency's value shouldn't be measured solely by the percentage it charges, but above all by the quality of the work it does and the results it delivers.

My ambition is to make IMMO-MALIN a national player in next-generation real estate. We are steadily growing our network of independent real estate advisors, within an organisation that gives them access to high-performing tools, genuine support, training, and a brand that brings them visibility. I also want to keep investing in technology, particularly in valuation tools, data analysis, artificial intelligence and process automation. At the same time, we are working on expanding our activities, developing rental and property management. In the long run, I want to build a complete real estate ecosystem that supports owners across their various asset-related projects. But beyond the company's growth, my ambition is also to help shift mindsets within our profession.

Tomorrow's real estate will be more digital, more transparent and more accessible. But it will remain deeply human. That combination of technological innovation and closeness to clients is, to my mind, exactly what the future of IMMO-MALIN looks like.