The Real Currency in El Gouna Resale Is Trust — And It's Worth Protecting
After years of managing and marketing properties in El Gouna, I want to write openly about something that matters to owners, buyers, and honest agencies alike: the way resale is handled here.
El Gouna is the best destination in Egypt — a town built on vision, care, and a reputation for doing things properly. That is exactly why it deserves a resale experience that lives up to its name. The most valuable currency any market has is trust, and it is worth protecting.
The challenge, honestly stated
When an owner decides to sell, their listing can quickly slip out of careful hands. Within days the same unit may be circulating across dozens of phones. Photos get copied. Contact details change hands quietly. Suddenly one home is being marketed by many unconnected people, each with a slightly different price, none of them accountable, several simply hoping to hold the position until they can find a buyer elsewhere.
Let me be realistic: no one can fully stop private contact details from circulating. That will always happen to some degree. But owners can protect themselves with awareness. If someone calls claiming to have a buyer, yet cannot explain how they came to have your number, that itself tells you what kind of operator you are dealing with. A legitimate representative can always account for how they reached you.
The instinct is that more agents means more exposure. In practice it often means scattered information, an unclear price, offers that may not be genuine, and a growing impression — for serious buyers — that something is off. A buyer visiting El Gouna for the first time who sees the same apartment offered by a crowd of unconnected brokers does not think "great choice." They think "something is wrong here," and they move on. Everyone loses — including the owner who thought they were widening their odds.
Why one agency is worth more than many
One accountable agency — with proper access to the unit, a professional photo shoot, and a single coherent marketing effort — creates more value than a dozen scattered intermediaries ever could. One entity means one honest price benchmark from the start, one controlled and dignified viewing experience, one clear read on whether an offer is real or merely a placeholder, and one accountable face standing behind the transaction.
Exclusivity, properly understood, is not a demand made by the agency. It is the owner's own interest. And it does not shut other professionals out. Agencies can and should cooperate on a sale — but cooperation works cleanly only once a unit's exclusive representation is known and respected. Then collaboration happens in the open, not in the shadows.
What a legitimate agency actually is
There is a meaningful difference between a licensed real estate company and an individual with a phone and a contact list. A legitimate agency operates with a commercial register and a tax card. It is traceable, accountable, and taxed. It carries a reputation it cannot afford to damage. Raising this standard is not about excluding anyone. It is about protecting owners and buyers alike.
Transparency in the process itself
Trust also shows up in the mechanics of a sale, so let me be clear about how a clean resale should work — and the good news is it's simple.
The costs should be visible and agreed before anything begins. On a resale there is an admin fee owed to the developer, and real estate tax calculated as a set percentage of the final sale price. The agency commission — a percentage agreed in advance — should be calculated on the net sale price after those costs are deducted, rather than inflated on top of the headline figure. In other words: start with the sale price, take out the admin fee and the tax, and the commission is worked out on what remains. Clean, fair, and easy for everyone to see.
A proper deposit — a sensible percentage of the final price — should be held in escrow by the exclusive agency, where it does three honest jobs: it secures the agency's agreed commission, it protects the owner's share, and it funds the admin fee to the developer to begin the process. A vague promise of "a deposit tomorrow" that secures nothing and explains nothing is not a transaction. It is a stalling tactic. Owners deserve to know the difference.
The way forward — together
El Gouna works best when it works as one. The developer has always been the steward of this town's standards, and a healthier resale experience serves that vision directly: more confident buyers, cleaner transactions, and a reputation that brings people back. I would genuinely welcome a shared protocol — something that could be raised in a town hall, carried in an awareness note to owners, or simply adopted as common practice — built on a few simple principles: verified, licensed representation; a single accountable agency per listing, chosen in the owner's interest; open cooperation between professionals; transparent costs and deposits; and respect for owners' privacy.
I am not writing this to point fingers. I am writing it because I would rather help build the standard than complain about its absence — and because I believe the people who built El Gouna want the same thing.
If you own a home here, or care about where this market is heading, I would welcome your thoughts.
— Rami Awad, Founder & CEO, Jeeran
