Egypt’s online real estate listing platform Aqarmap announced on November 20 that it has successfully started selling properties online by allowing buyers to pay a downpayment with their credit cards to withhold exclusively discounted units, Invest-Gate reports.

Aqarmap was inspired by an already existing offline behavior that occurs in the Egyptian market, since property developers typically collect down payments from buyers during their new projects’ launch events and the company successfully replicated such experience online, CEO and Founder of Aqarmap Amad Almsaodi said in a released statement.

“Real Estate portals across the globe are attempting to expand their role in the consumer search journey beyond just generating leads. Our team decided to leapfrog these attempts that are happening in more developed markets as we saw an opportunity to take the transaction completely inline,” Almsaodi was quoted as saying.

“Obviously, this approach cannot work for all use-cases; however, we found it very applicable in a new home off plan sales where buyers typically cannot see the property they are buying and are willing to reserve a unit online by paying a small reservation fee with their credit card,” he added.

According to Almsaodi, three developers have appraised the new service and Aqarmap was able to sell their assigned properties within 48 hours.

He added that Aqarmap presented the new model at Property Portal Watch conference in Madrid, an annual event that connects top real estate marketplaces from all global markets, in which it was the first time any real estate classifieds website has successfully conducted sales online and also collected commissions.

Almsaodi anticipated that the new online model will be enhanced and improved over time.

Back in July, Aqarmap launched “Exchange,” a feature that allows brokers to share standardized listings of properties, in an attempt to improve the efficiency of Egypt’s real estate market and as part of Aqarmap Live – a mobile-only CRM solution that is used by many real estate brokerages in Egypt to exchange buyer requests and listings securely within a network of vetted brokers, without sharing any private data.