Reel estate: Meet the Insta-savvy property agents changing how homes are bought

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zabardast (fantastic). Rafique Merchant often uses these words during his virtual property tours on Instagram and YouTube. The real estate agent’s popularity on social media even saw him play a cameo in the 2023 Netflix movie Rana Naidu, where he plays himself.

“I sell a crappy apartment to the actor Abhishek Banerjee in the movie," Merchant laughs. In real life, Mumbai-based Merchant, who started out a decade ago with small paying guest and one-bedroom rental deals, is a bit of a star in his own right, on social media. That star turn began early in 2021, when the Maharashtra government’s stamp duty exemption turned the Mumbai property market around.

Merchant took to Instagram after TikTok was banned and ramped up his YouTube presence. There was no looking back after that. Today, he has 220,000 followers on Instagram and 134,000 subscribers on YouTube and his fame has taken him far and wide.

His followers include first-time homebuyers, investors, sellers, and property enthusiasts. “Once I became active on social media, I started getting calls from developers, digital agencies, property owners, even buyers. It became a lead-generation technique.

Today, I market and sell properties in Kerala, Bengaluru, Goa, Dubai and London. I even have a team in Ahmedabad," says Merchant. From earning ₹2 lakh a year, he now rakes in about ₹2 crore (last year), combining brokerage fees and influencer marketing as well as sales reels and videos.