Czech regulators opened a probe into Bezrealitky after the Association of Real Estate Agencies filed a complaint alleging unfair commercial practices. At issue is Komfort, a full-service brokerage product the platform launched earlier this year that charges 1.5% of the sale price plus VAT — covering valuation, marketing, viewings, contracts, escrow, and land registry filing. All the seller has to do is open the front door.
According to ARK’s president Miroslav Duda, the complaint is simple: if it walks like a brokerage and charges like a brokerage, then it’s a brokerage. That makes naming itself “without an agent” and claiming to charge no commission is misleading. What makes the case interesting is that Bezrealitky doesn’t really disagree on the substance of the issue — its own marketing head Pavel Skalsky describes Komfort as a “full-fledged real estate brokerage” on the company’s website. The dispute is about the label, not the service.
But this fight is going in both directions. In its comments, ARK called the 1.5% fee Bezrealitky charges a “standard and customary” charge for standard real estate agencies. But Bezrealitky’s CEO Hendrik Meyer challenged the country’s other agencies to charge such a small amount. “If that’s a standard commission, we invite all sellers to demand 1.5% plus VAT from their own agent. They can write to us about how the agent reacted,” he said.
He argues real estate agencies have turned commissions into a goldmine: as residential prices have ballooned in recent years, agencies continue to charge between 3% and 5% for their services. At the same time, Meyer claims digitalization has reduced the amount of work involved by 40%.
Bezrealitky’s ultimate claim is that AI and digitalization are making the work of human brokers redundant. The reality seems to be that Bezrealitky has been quietly becoming a brokerage for years, and it’s the ethics of its very name that ARK has now challenged. Whether the branding crosses a legal line is now up to the Czech Trade Inspection Authority to decide.
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