SaaS is Dead! Real Estate Companies: Recover 63 Million Yen in 5 Years of Salesforce Costs in About 2 Years with AI Development

Irwin&co Inc. (Location: 5-5 Maruyama-cho, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo; CEO: Kai Irwin) announces the launch of a commissioned development service (https://irwin-lp.vercel.app/) for real estate companies considering a shift away from general-purpose SaaS like Salesforce. The service develops specialized CRM/SFA and portal sites centered on property management. Through our AI-powered commissioned development service, which automatically generates quotes and requirement definitions within 3 minutes just by answering questions and provides a working demo for free from the first meeting, we offer a new way to break away from SaaS, allowing clients to verify 'Will it really work after switching?' before signing a contract.

■ Background: 'Even after introducing Salesforce, the field is still fighting with Excel and manual entry'

While the introduction of general-purpose SaaS like CRM/SFA is progressing widely in the real estate industry, voices from the procurement and sales front lines persist:

• Manually entering and transcribing the contents of property flyers (Mysoku), registry copies, and property summaries, one property at a time.

• Searches based on business intuition, like 'past properties in that area' or 'nearby transaction examples,' yield no results.

• Essential calculations for procurement decisions, such as price per tsubo, road value, and yield, are not standard features, leading to a return to Excel.

• Property information, customer information, and sales actions (SFA) are siloed, requiring manual matching.

• Yet, the user-license-based subscription costs only accumulate year after year based on the number of users and years of use.

'We introduced a multi-functional global standard SaaS, but the field actually uses only a small part of it. Yet, we keep paying for all functions and all users.' This structural mismatch is stalling DX for real estate companies. Amidst the global trend of 'SaaS is Dead' (moving from an era where humans operate SaaS to an era where AI executes tasks), Irwin&co solves this problem with a new approach: transitioning to an AI-native system optimized for real estate operations. In fact, about 80% of our customers are real estate companies that have decided to 'break away from Salesforce.'

■ Estimating the Cumulative Cost of Salesforce: 63 Million Yen over 5 Years for a 50-Person Company

The biggest issue hindering the shift away from general-purpose SaaS is cost. Based on Salesforce's published prices, calculating with the Enterprise edition required for system integration yields the following cumulative amounts*.

Assumed Scale

Configuration

Annual Cost

5-Year Cumulative

50 people

Enterprise

(21,000 yen/user/month)

12.6 million yen

63 million yen

50 people

Enterprise + AI Sales Add-on (Total 36,000 yen/user/month)

21.6 million yen

108 million yen

30 people

Enterprise

(21,000 yen/user/month)

7.56 million yen

37.8 million yen

Even after paying this amount, the system does not become a company asset, and real-estate-specific functions are not standard. Furthermore, customizations and data built up over time increase migration costs, creating a situation where companies 'want to break away but can't see the exit.' On the other hand, traditional commissioned development forces companies to make decisions worth millions to tens of millions of yen without seeing a working product until after the contract and payment, and development market prices remain high. This double bind has hindered switching.

*Based on Irwin&co's estimates using Salesforce's official published prices (as of June 2026, excluding tax, annual contract). The AI sales add-on assumes Agentforce for Sales (15,000 yen~/user/month). Actual contract prices vary depending on the configuration.

■ Four Values Provided by This Service
① Property Management as the 'Core,' Integrating CRM/SFA/Portal

Positioning the property database as the central 'core,' it connects customer information (CRM) and sales action management (SFA). It centrally manages property acquisition routes (registry copies, introductions, inquiries, walk-ins, etc.), brokerage types (general/exclusive), responsible persons, and branch information, seamlessly linking 'properties x customers x sales activities.' It includes built-in calculations and searches tailored to real estate business intuition, such as automatic calculation of price per tsubo, road value, leasehold ratio, depreciation (all estimates), gross/net yield, scenario analysis, distance search from past properties, and map display – things that 'couldn't be found with general-purpose SaaS.' It also supports bidirectional matching of properties and customers (internal/external).

② From Manual Entry to Drag & Drop: AI-OCR Automates Structuring

Simply drag and drop PDFs of property flyers, registry copies, property summaries, important matters explanations, etc., and AI-OCR reads and structures them. Information from brokers is displayed chronologically, allowing tracking of 'which month, which broker, which person in charge provided the information.' This structurally solves the biggest point of failure for general-purpose SaaS: 'the field won't enter data.' Easier input leads to more data accumulation, creating a virtuous cycle that improves the accuracy of search, matching, and profitability analysis.

③ 'Working Demo Before Contract' Eliminates Switching Risk, Cost is Half the Market Rate

By answering a form for 3 minutes, quotes and requirement definitions are automatically generated the same day, and a working demo is provided for free from the first meeting. Clients can experience and verify 'Does it fit our workflow?' and 'Can we migrate our existing data?' before signing a contract, effectively functioning as a feasibility study. Furthermore, by using cutting-edge AI tools like Claude and Cursor, we double productivity compared to conventional methods, achieving development at half the market rate. As it is a one-time purchase model, there are no monthly user fees, and costs do not increase even if the number of users grows. The cost of Salesforce Enterprise for a 50-person company for 2 years is approximately 25.2 million yen. Since our company bases its development on prices below this level, the development cost is generally recoverable within 2 years. The annual subscription cost of 12.6 million yen that would have accumulated from the third year onwards can be redirected to investment in procurement and sales.

④ Scratch Development Allows Unlimited Addition of Desired Features Later – Also Supports Building Property Portal Sites

With general-purpose SaaS, you often hit a wall where you 'give up because it's not a standard feature' or 'pass because the add-on cost is too high.' However, since this service uses scratch development, you can freely add and expand features according to your own business needs. Requests from the field, such as 'I want to add automatic capture of inquiry data' or 'I want to incorporate our own unique appraisal logic,' can be implemented on the company's own timeline without waiting for a SaaS version upgrade.

Furthermore, we can also build your company's property portal site linked to the property database accumulated in the property management system. Information entered into the in-house property management system is reflected directly on the portal site, eliminating the need for double entry for listing. This allows the entire process from 'procurement to management to sales and customer acquisition' to be completed on a single data platform, nurturing the system into a company's own customer acquisition asset.

■ Service Areas

We can handle system development involving a wide range of generative AI functions, including: Property Management Systems / CRM / SFA / Real Estate Portal Site Production / AI-OCR Electronic Document Reading / Profit Calculation & Property Matching Functions / Migration from General-Purpose SaaS & Data Integration, etc.

■ Usage