Thomas Potgieter

Thomas got into property in 2012, buying houses, fixing them and selling them. It taught him the parts of this industry that nobody puts in a brochure. What a house actually costs to make saleable, what a bad month feels like, and how much of the money ends up somewhere other than with the person who did the work.

He started selling real estate in 2014 and has started and run a number of businesses since, across both sales and development.

In 2018 he and his wife Rode founded the agency that trades today as Home Seekers. The brand is new. The company is not. It has been registered with the Property Practitioners Regulatory Authority since 2018 and has traded continuously ever since under its original registration.

That same year Thomas moved into property development, where he spent the next five years while Rode ran the agency. He came back to sales in 2023, and what he came back to bothered him.

Your accountant charges a fee. Your attorney charges a fee. Your bookkeeper charges a fee. There is exactly one supplier in an estate agent’s business that takes a percentage of everything they earn instead, and it happens to be the biggest one. He asked a lot of people to explain that and never got an answer that held up. The closest anyone got was that it has always worked that way.

In 2025 the business was rebranded as Home Seekers and rebuilt around the opposite idea. Agents keep one hundred percent of their commission, less their chosen subscription and R1,500 per registered sale, excluding VAT. Everything they need to trade is included. The price list is published on this website, including the part where the model is the wrong answer for some agents, because Thomas would rather lose that agent than take a fee that doesn’t work for the person paying it.

He is blunt about who Home Seekers is for and who it isn’t. Agents doing three deals a year are told so, in public and in writing.

Outside the business he plays golf, and he used to race BMWs, which he has put aside while he builds this. He intends to get back to it.

Thomas runs Home Seekers from Pretoria with Rode Potgieter, his wife and business partner. The aim is the largest independent agency in South Africa, built by agents who own what they build.