The Negotiator The essential site for residential agents
A tech-based home buyer passport is about to launch that will enable agents to qualify buyers, purchasers to prove to agents that they are serious and vendors to understand more about people making offers.
Called Hipla, it is already being trialled with several estate agents and vendors prior to its consumer launch, which is imminent.
Hipla, which has some similarities to Labour’s doomed Home Information Packs, has been a part of the current government’s Geovation Accelerator Programme for the past 12 months.
Geovation is a joint venture between the Land Registry and Ordnance Survey to promote tech innovation in the housing market.
Proptech
“Receiving the backing, guidance and help from HM Land Registry, Geovation, and Ordnance Survey has helped our early stage start-up gain a much steadier footing than it otherwise would have done,” says Hipla founder Adam Phillips (below).
“Their help with early stage funding, office space, data and market insights has been invaluable.
“
And their support has meant we are now in a much better position to deliver on our objectives of improving the home buying process.”
Phillips’ comments were made at the launch of this year’s Accelerator programme, which features seven start-ups including a drone airspace management service, a digital concierge app called Winston and RenKap, an affordable homes marketplace.
“We offer a founder-friendly environment, great mentors, high-quality workshop content and, almost uniquely, a dedicated software development team in house, who work hand in hand with our companies to build and release their first products,” says Alex Wrottesley, Head of Geovation.
It doesn’t appear to have any similarities to the Home Information Pack at all! The HIP was “doomed” only because David Cameron decided to dispense with it on day 1 of his time in Downing Street with the same amount of forethought he evidently gave to referenda on Scotland and Europe. HIPs, while regarded as a nuisance by many, were actually gaining traction and were beginning to speed the conveyancing process by providing valuable information at a very early stage. I’m sure the hipla app will be a helpful tool at some stage but I cannot see it contributing to solving the biggest problem in the British property market – the time it takes from agreeing a sale to exchange of contracts and the fact that buyer and seller are in no way committed to the deal until that elusive ‘exchange of contracts’. An app or a proptech tool that would provide truly valuable information to the solicitors at the outset of a transaction (a vendor passport too) would be truly welcome in the absence of a law or mechanism to bind buyer and seller more quickly after a deal is agreed. A local solicitor proudly informed us recently that the average time between exchange and completion (in their firm) is now 11 weeks!