Founder
Thiemo Sjors is the founder of GounaRealty. After spending years between Amsterdam and El Gouna, he saw the property market was fragmented across a dozen brokers, scrapers, and lifestyle services. He built GounaRealty to bring it all into one place — for buyers, renters, and the local agencies serving them.
Thiemo Sjors, founder of GounaRealty, El GounaI moved between Amsterdam and El Gouna for years. Every time someone asked me "where do I look for a villa in Gouna?" I had to explain the same thing: scrape ten broker sites, half of them out of date, photos repeated, prices in three currencies, no shared map. The market was big — 25,000 residents, around one million visitors a year, 18 hotels, 40 neighborhoods — but the way you found a home in it felt stuck in 2010. So I built what I kept wishing existed.
GounaRealty is the property OS for El Gouna. Every listing from every active broker, normalized into one searchable feed. Real photos, real prices, accurate map pins, neighborhood scores, lifestyle context. Plus tools agencies actually want: lead capture via WhatsApp, a dashboard for their own listings, multi-language reach across the diaspora that is actually here (Dutch, German, Russian, Arabic, English). Phase 1 covers El Gouna real estate. Phase 2 expands across Egypt. Phase 3 layers in everything else you do when you live or stay here — restaurants, beach clubs, dive trips, kite spots.
We believe property search in El Gouna should look more like booking a flight than reading a classifieds page. One trustworthy index, one shared map, one set of comparable prices. Agencies keep their listings, their relationships, their commissions — we route qualified buyers their way through WhatsApp, the channel they already use. Buyers see the full picture before they get on a plane. Investors see actual market data, not the polished subset on one broker's homepage. The thesis is simple: better information makes better decisions, and better decisions grow the whole market.
We are not a broker. We do not own listings, take commissions on sales, or compete with the agencies who do. We are an aggregator and a lead-routing layer. When you find a property you love on GounaRealty, the inquiry goes via WhatsApp to the authorised agency that owns the listing. They handle the viewing, the negotiation, and the contract. We do not insert ourselves between buyer and seller. This structural choice matters: it is why the data-quality benchmark works (we have no incentive to inflate prices or hide stale listings), and it is why local agencies are willing to feed us their inventory.
Six sources aggregate into one feed: Bayut Egypt, Property Finder Egypt, Aqarmap, Nawy, Dubizzle (OLX) Egypt, and Gouna360. Each property records its `source` and `source_url` field so you can always check the original. Cross-source deduplication runs nightly — when the same physical property appears on multiple feeds, we keep the highest-quality record (most photos, most complete amenities, most recent update) and surface the rest as alternates. Pricing benchmarks are cross-referenced against Knight Frank MENA quarterly reports and Property Finder Egypt market data. We cite our sources in every guide; no fabricated numbers.
Buyers and renters who want to see the full picture before they get on a plane. Agencies who want a modern back-office without building one themselves. Investors who need real market data, not just listings. Snowbirds planning a 3-6 month stay. Remote workers considering relocation. Egyptian diaspora across the Netherlands, Germany, the Gulf, and the UK who want to buy a second home back home. If that is you, the platform is live at gounarealty.com — and I am on WhatsApp.
Phase 1 (now): El Gouna real-estate aggregation across all six listing sources, with the eight neighborhood deep-dives, five pillar buying guides (~20,000 words), and the agentic surface (MCP catalog + plugin manifest + llms.txt family) live. Phase 2 (planned): expand across Egypt — Sahl Hasheesh, Soma Bay, El Alamein, North Coast, Cairo. Phase 3 (planned): Gouna Living verticals — restaurants, dive trips, kite spots, beach clubs, day-charter, residency services. Egypt FRA (Financial Regulatory Authority) registration intent confirmed; formal status pending the Phase 1 → Phase 2 transition.
Founder story
El Gouna has roughly 25,000 residents and around one million visitors a year. The property market spans 40 neighborhoods, 18 hotels, and dozens of broker shops. The listings sit fragmented across a dozen platforms — same villas, different prices, different photos, half of them stale.
Gouna Realty is the answer to that fragmentation. We aggregate 1,884 listings from 6 verified source platforms into one searchable feed. Each property keeps its source attribution and a back-link to the original page. We are not a brokerage. We do not hold deposits, sign sale-contracts, or take commissions on closed deals.
Lead-routing goes via WhatsApp to the listing-agency, where it belongs. The agency handles the viewing, the negotiation, and the contract. We sit outside the transaction by design — that structural separation is why our data-quality benchmark works and why local agencies feed us their inventory.
6 authorized source platforms feed the aggregator. Each listing records its source platform and source URL, so any claim is traceable to its original posting.
Egypt FRA Act 10/2009 governs transactional brokers — entities that hold deposits, sign contracts, and take commissions. Gouna Realty is none of those. We aggregate, we surface, we route inquiries. Each source-agency is responsible for its own licensing under Egyptian law. We declare this stance up front rather than imply a license the platform does not need.
Thiemo Sjors on LinkedIn. Cross-platform identity-verify via rel="me" per the IndieWeb microformat — Search engines and AI assistants can follow the link to confirm the byline matches the platform.
Where the listings come from
Every listing keeps its origin. We cite our sources in every guide — we aggregate and attribute, we never fabricate.
By the numbers
Every figure on this page traces back to verified data — we aggregate and attribute, we never inflate.
OUR APPROACH
Three pillars that shape every listing surfaced and every lead routed inside the platform.
Founder of GounaRealty, building the El Gouna property OS. Moved between Amsterdam and El Gouna for years before launching the aggregator.
El Gouna has 25,000 residents, around one million visitors a year, 18 hotels, and 40 neighborhoods — but the property search experience was stuck in 2010. GounaRealty fixes that.
Every listing from every active broker, normalized into one searchable feed. Real photos, accurate map pins, neighborhood scores, and lifestyle context.
Phase 1 covers El Gouna. Phase 2 expands across Egypt (Sahl Hasheesh, Soma Bay, El Alamein, North Coast, Cairo). Phase 3 adds lifestyle services like restaurants, dive trips, and kite spots.
No. We are an aggregator and a lead-routing layer. We route inquiries via WhatsApp to the authorised agency that owns each listing. We do not take commissions on sales.
Six sources: Bayut Egypt, Property Finder Egypt, Aqarmap, Nawy, Dubizzle (OLX) Egypt, and Gouna360. Each property records its source and source URL.
WhatsApp is the fastest channel. The CTA on this page opens a direct chat. Email also works: thiemo@gounarealty.com.
For agencies
Je listings verschijnen in een feed die buyers echt doorzoeken. Wij routen warme leads naar jouw WhatsApp, jij sluit de deal op standaard courtage. Het platform blijft neutraal.
Become a partnerWhatsApp is the fastest channel. Reply usually within a few hours.
We publish our regulatory stance up front so you can verify how the platform works.
Listings on Gouna Realty originate from the following partner feeds. Each agency is responsible for its own licensing under Egyptian law; we surface their listings and route qualified inquiries via WhatsApp.
License-verification of individual agencies is pending — we aggregate, we do not audit. Always confirm an agency's licence directly before signing any contract.
AI visibility
We keep our facts sourced and dated, so answer engines can quote El Gouna pages with confidence.
Monitoring in progress
We track these engines for verified mentions. None confirmed yet — we will list each one here with its prompt and source.
