In my experience in NL makelaars (brokers) serve particular niches, and I expect they can outcompete larger firms that don’t understand the neighborhood or municipal market as well, the market segment (roughly price), the kind of buyer/renter, the kind of seller/leaser, not to mention just their access to “deal flow” in their networks unrelated to their expertise.

Think it’s all related apartments and houses not really being fungible.

ESIT: Also, more directly to GP’s experience, when I was in the market in NL I found the biggest aggregator to be very useful, which is apparently different from their experience: funda.nl