09/13/2026
The Market Behind the Market: Aqar Exit and Hidden Real Estate Supply
The recent attention around Aqar Exit in Egypt has focused largely on one question: does the number of owners looking to exit their real estate contracts indicate a wider problem in the Egyptian market?
I think there is another, perhaps more important, question.
What if the platform is simply making visible a market that was always there, but that nobody could properly see?
Real estate markets are heavily influenced by the information available to buyers. We hear about successful launches, projects selling out, price increases and strong demand. What is much harder to see is how many of the people who bought those units would actually like to get out before completion.
Aqar Exit changes that, at least to some extent.
Its model is particularly interesting because it does not allow the seller to add an “overprice.” The seller is essentially looking to recover what was paid, while the incoming buyer takes over the remaining contractual obligation at the original contract price.
That makes the platform more than a simple resale marketplace. It begins to expose something that is often hidden: the actual willingness of existing purchasers to exit.
The current number of units on the platform is still very small relative to the size of the Egyptian real estate market, so I would be cautious about drawing broad conclusions from it today.
But the concept itself deserves attention.
We have been living with a hidden market in Ontario for years
In my real estate practice in Ontario, one of the most common misconceptions I encounter with pre-construction purchasers is this:
“My unit is assignable, so I can sell it whenever I want.”
That is very often not what the contract says.
An assignment is not automatically a purchaser’s right. It must be permitted under the original Agreement of Purchase and Sale with the builder, or sometimes negotiated at the time of purchase.
Even when assignment is allowed, it usually does not mean:
sell whenever you want, to whoever you want, however you want.
It usually means that the purchaser may request permission to assign, subject to the builder’s conditions.
The builder may review the proposed purchaser, require financial information, satisfy itself that the new buyer is capable of completing the transaction, charge assignment and legal fees, and impose other contractual requirements.
But there is an even more important restriction that many buyers do not appreciate.
You may be permitted to assign the contract while being strictly prohibited from publicly marketing the unit for sale, lease or assignment before closing.
That distinction is critical.
A purchaser may have the right to request an assignment, while having no right to openly advertise the opportunity in order to find the assignee.
In some builder agreements, unauthorized marketing can amount to a purchaser default and expose the purchaser to serious contractual consequences, depending on the wording of the agreement.
So we end up with a strange situation:
You may be allowed to ask the builder to approve an assignment, but not allowed to publicly advertise the unit to find the person you want to assign it to.
This creates a market the public cannot see
From the brokerage side, we sometimes see a very different market from the one visible to the public.
A project may appear to have very little supply.
Yet behind the scenes, numerous original purchasers may be contacting agents because they want to exit their contracts.
Those agents contact other agents. They call investors. They circulate opportunities privately. They search their databases for potential buyers.
But the broader market sees none of it.
That is also why a platform like Aqar Exit would be genuinely useful in Ontario. It could aggregate assignment opportunities, improve visibility and give the market a much clearer picture of how many purchasers are actually trying to exit.
The problem is that, under many builder agreements, purchasers are not permitted to publicly market their units for assignment before closing. That contractual restriction makes a broad public platform difficult to operate here in the same way.
What we tend to have instead are smaller private networks, agent-to-agent circulation, investor groups and closed databases where assignment opportunities are shared more quietly.
In an extreme case, a significant portion of the purchasers in a project could be trying to assign their units, while somebody researching that same building online might conclude that there is almost no inventory, or at least no good inventory.
That matters.
Visible supply is not necessarily the same as the actual willingness to sell.
And when secondary inventory cannot be openly exposed, the parties controlling the visible inventory inevitably have greater influence over the market narrative, pricing and perception of demand.
There are legitimate reasons why developers want control over assignments. A developer still selling its own inventory does not necessarily want dozens of original purchasers competing against it at different prices. It also needs confidence that replacement purchasers can ultimately close.
But there is a transparency trade-off.
There is another side to the problem: how buyers entered in the first place
This is not only an exit problem.
In Egypt, Ontario and many other markets, buyers are often sold on future appreciation.
The familiar sales pitch is:
“Buy now. Prices will be much higher in a few years. Don’t worry — there will always be someone willing to buy it from you.”
When salespeople are primarily measured by how much they sell, there will always be pressure to sell the upside.
The danger comes when a purchaser enters a long-term contractual commitment based not on the ability to complete it, but on the assumption that somebody else will take it over before closing.
That is where qualification, disclosure and regulation become important.
Ontario has introduced many rules and safeguards around pre-construction real estate over the years. That is a much larger subject that can’t be covered here.
No system will eliminate speculation, poor judgment or even deliberate attempts to circumvent the rules.
People will always find ways to take risks, and some will try to work around whatever rules are imposed.
But sensible barriers can at least reduce the number of purchasers entering transactions they do not fully understand or could never realistically complete.
So is Aqar Exit a good model?
It is too early to know.
The numbers remain small relative to Egypt’s overall market, and we still need to see how successfully these advertised exits actually convert into completed, developer-approved transfers.
But I find the concept interesting for a different reason.
Aqar Exit may be doing more than helping distressed purchasers. It may be exposing a segment of real estate supply that traditional market structures often keep fragmented and invisible.
Ontario’s experience shows that even a sophisticated assignment system does not automatically create a transparent assignment market.
The real issue is not the number of people who want to exit.
The real issue is whether the market has enough transparency to know who wants out, enough discipline to ensure that those entering can realistically carry their commitments, and enough structure to allow an orderly transfer when circumstances change.
A healthy real estate market is not one where everyone appears to be buying. It is one where buyers enter responsibly, can exit transparently when needed, and the public can see the true balance between demand and supply.
Mohammad Abusaa
Director and Broker of Record
AKARAT Group Inc. Real Estate Brokerage
Oakville, Ontario – Canada
www.akarat.ca
