Buying a home in Egypt often means signing up for years of monthly payments. For some buyers, the numbers stop working long before the keys arrive. Now a startup built to get them out of those contracts has money from an investor.
Aqar Exit, an Egyptian proptech startup, has raised $200,000 from businessman Ayman Mamdouh Abbas, executive chairman of Intro Holding Group, who takes a 10% stake. The deal values the company at about $2 million, or around EGP 100 million. Founder and chairman Mahmoud Ammar disclosed the investment in an interview with Al Arabiya Business. It follows the startup’s appearance on the fifth season of Shark Tank Egypt. Aqar Exit plans to use the money to build new products and expand abroad, starting with the Gulf, and aims to raise about $5 million in 2027.
Aqar Exit, founded in 2026, runs a platform where people who can no longer afford their instalments can transfer a property purchase contract to a new buyer. An owner enters their contract details and uploads the contract and payment receipts. The platform turns these into a verified offer for buyers. A case manager then helps find someone who can take over the payments. Both sides are guided through the transfer until the money arrives. Buyers state their budget, view verified listings with full figures and make an offer. They then receive an officially approved contract from the developer.
Sellers pay nothing. Buyers pay a fee of 1.25% of the contract value, and only when the transfer succeeds. The platform also says it cannot promise how fast a contract will sell or what share of their money owners will recover, since that depends on the contract, the developer’s approval and the market.
Since launch, Aqar Exit says it has closed $181 million in listings across 638 transactions, including 404 in its latest reported month, up from 233 the month before. It has registered 14,845 assignment files from 11,833 sellers, and 67,013 purchase requests from 32,870 prospective buyers. Average daily purchase requests rose 58% to 1,060 from 671. The company counts any listing taken off the platform as closed, so these figures are not all completed sales or revenue.
Our own arithmetic shows why that matters. If every closed listing were a completed transfer, a 1.25% fee on $181 million would come to about $2.3 million. That is a ceiling, not a revenue figure. It is also worth noting how few files have closed so far, about 638 against 14,845, which suggests most contracts are still waiting for a buyer or a developer’s sign-off.
The demand has a clear cause. Egypt’s developers have stretched payment plans over many years to keep sales high. Enterprise reported in July that the biggest developers are owed huge sums in deferred cheques and still have large backlogs of homes to deliver. It also noted that the pound has lost much of its purchasing power since early 2023, while prices rose a nominal 10% to 20%. Cement was about 26% dearer than a year earlier. When costs climb faster than incomes, a long instalment plan that looked sensible at signing can become a burden.
For those buyers, a resale market for contracts is a lifeline. For developers, it is also a pressure valve, since a transfer can keep payments flowing instead of ending in a default.
Why it matters: Aqar Exit is a sign that distress in the property market is creating its own businesses. It offers many Egyptian households a way out. It also raises a question that regulators and developers will need to answer: how to make contract transfers fast, transparent and fair, so that sellers are not squeezed and buyers know exactly what they are taking on.
What to watch next: how many of the platform’s files turn into completed transfers, whether developers approve assignments faster, whether the Gulf expansion works, and whether it can raise its $5 million round in 2027.
Sources: African-Startups on Aqar Exit’s $200k raise; Arab Finance on Ayman Abbas’s 10% stake; Enterprise on the developer liquidity crunch; Aqar Exit. Dollar and pound valuations are as reported; the fee estimate is our arithmetic.
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