Key takeaways
- The real gap in cross-border property buying isn’t the sale price, it’s the difference between the gross return marketing promises and what’s left after fees, taxes, and vacancy.
- TEKCE built its own platform, MyTEKCE, instead of buying off-the-shelf software, because the team closing deals daily is the one that should design the fix.
- A buyer’s biggest fear is not knowing what stage their documents are at. TEKCE’s dashboard makes every legal step visible instead of leaving buyers waiting for updates.
- TEKCE has closed crypto property deals since 2017, and turns down more of them than it accepts to protect its compliance standard.
- Instead of guarding its verified listings, TEKCE opened them to independent agents through a white-label app, choosing to grow a shared market over fighting for one.
Sending life savings to people you've never met, in a country you don't fully know, is how most cross-border property deals start. For a lot of buyers, that's also where trust quietly falls apart.
That's the problem Özkan Tekçe, Chief Operating Officer of TEKCE, set out to solve on a recent episode of the Goodfirms Podcast. TEKCE runs 20 offices across five countries and closes property transactions in more than 30 languages. The firm pioneered remote property sales through TeleProperty back in 2008, more than a decade before remote transactions became the norm, and has handled cryptocurrency property deals since 2017.
Drawing on more than two decades of running a cross-border brokerage, Özkan shares a practical playbook for building digital trust in an industry still run on blind faith.
Who Is Özkan Tekçe?Özkan Tekçe is the Chief Operating Officer of TEKCE, a real estate brokerage operating across five countries that built its own proprietary platform, MyTEKCE, instead of licensing someone else's software. On this episode of the Goodfirms Podcast: Conversations That Matter, Özkan breaks down why most property returns fall short of what buyers expect, how TEKCE turned a black-box transaction into something a buyer can watch unfold, and why the firm treats crypto compliance as a daily discipline rather than a legal headache. |
The Gap Nobody Talks About
Across all five countries TEKCE operates in, Özkan sees the same problem repeat. "The biggest common issue in all five countries is the gap between gross return of investment and the real net return of investment," he said.
Marketing promises big gross returns. Reality includes operating costs, management fees, taxes, and seasonality risk, and the gap widens further in short-term rentals, where returns depend on management and reviews, not just the listing photo. TEKCE’s approach is to put every hidden cost on the table from day one, because trust starts with honest numbers.
Why a Working Brokerage Built Its Own Software
Most PropTech platforms come from tech firms guessing at how real estate actually works. TEKCE built MyTEKCE the other way around, inside a brokerage that was already closing deals.
"Real estate changes every three to five years. Technology changes much faster," Özkan said. A pure tech company brings analysts, managers, and long delivery cycles, and understands software without understanding the field. MyTEKCE was built by TEKCE's own agents, the people who see a client's real problems every day. "You can write perfect code, but you cannot invent the real human experience of a property transaction from a desk."
Turning the Black Box Transparent
Trust usually breaks down from missing information, not bad intentions, according to Özkan. A buyer wiring their savings abroad often hears little more than "we're waiting for the main office," with no way to check what's actually happening.
MyTEKCE replaces that black box with a login where clients can track documents, updates, and after-sales status in one place. “The industry says, trust us. We say, you don’t need to trust us blindly. You can see the process yourself,” Özkan said. That’s a different standard than most real estate CRM software is built for, internal tracking, not client visibility.
From Stalled to Signed
The biggest blocker in a cross-border deal is uncertainty. A buyer's documents, power of attorney, and title deed often sit with people the buyer has never met, in a legal system they don't understand. When they can't see what stage those documents are at, the deal stalls.
TEKCE's TeleProperty vision, running since 2008, was built to close that gap. A live video tour today shows more than rooms. Agents walk buyers past the balcony view, the street, and even the neighborhood bakery. "You are not just buying four walls, you are buying a life," Özkan said. Buyers are ready to sign, in his words, once they start seeing a transparent guide rather than an agent.
Why TEKCE Opened Its Own Infrastructure
TEKCE's app lets independent agents white-label its technology and sell thousands of its verified listings under their own brand, even though those same agents could become competitors.
Özkan used to see the market as zero-sum. Not anymore. No single company can reach every buyer alone, and many strong local agents lack the legal and technological infrastructure TEKCE already built. By sharing it, TEKCE isn't creating rivals; it's combining strengths. "We don't want to keep the whole pie. We grow the pie by sharing our standards. Building an ecosystem is smarter and more profitable than fighting everyone."
Crypto, Minus the Hype
TEKCE has closed crypto property deals since 2017, and Özkan is direct about what crypto actually solves. It is not about speed or bypassing banks. It's converting volatile digital wealth into something legal, stable, and physical.
Compliance across five jurisdictions with different anti-money laundering rules sounds like a nightmare for most firms. For TEKCE, it's routine. "We have rejected more crypto transactions than we have accepted," Özkan said. If a deal doesn't clear strict KYC and AML checks, the firm walks away, choosing reputation over short-term profit every time.
Where AI Actually Helps
Özkan doesn't buy the hype around AI closing property deals on its own. "Nobody gives their life savings to a bot," he said, and he doesn't expect that to change soon.
Where AI genuinely helps is operational: routing requests across 30+ languages to the right consultant, and making sure platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity represent TEKCE’s identity accurately, so global investors can find the firm there too. Teams weighing a similar build-versus-buy call can compare real estate software development companies handling that kind of custom work.
Rapid Fire With Özkan Tekçe
- One word for the current state of cross-border real estate? Journey.
- Bigger unlock for a buyer, crypto payments, or remote viewings? Remote viewings.
- Live video tour or in-person visit? Live video tour. TEKCE bought its own Alicante office that way.
For the rest of the rapid-fire answers, check out the full episode on YouTube.
Conclusion
TEKCE’s model comes down to one idea: buyers don’t need to be told to trust a firm; they need to see it working, whether that’s a gross-to-net ROI breakdown or a crypto compliance check.
You don’t need a brokerage license to apply for the same test. Ask what a vendor is willing to show you, not just tell you. Ask what happens to your information once a transaction is “in process.” Ask whether a company’s technology runs the operation or just decorates the website.
Where to Find Özkan Tekçe and TEKCE
Website: TEKCE
LinkedIn: Özkan Tekçe
Conversations That Matter is the Goodfirms podcast featuring the practitioners, founders, and operators behind some of the most interesting companies in the world. Subscribe wherever you listen.
