Renting app Movebubble has been offline for over a week with no one at the company replying to enquiries.

A message on its website says ‘Movebubble is undergoing critical technical issues which are taking longer to resolve than expected. Our app is offline also, so please bear with us as we try to fix these issues’.

Such a prolonged period of inactivity is highly unusual for a tech platform like Movebubble, which originally launched as a way for landlords to interact directly with tenants, later moving on to become backed by, and more closely associated with, players within the build-to-rent sector.

Launched in 2013 by university friends Aidan Rushby, Tony Edwards and Logan Hall with an initial £900,000 from investors, it focussed on London’s huge private rented sector, initially hoping to cut letting agents out of the market.

It later embraced letting agents and launched in Manchester with a new focus on the build-to-rent market, offering several key benefits including ‘real time’ listings of properties available to rent in an area, and a ‘price match’ guarantee.

It later went on to raise £2.1 million via a further three rounds of investment.

But the company has endured several set-backs during the pandemic including the departure of Aidan Rushby in February last year, and the departure of former Rightmove boss Scott Forbes, who for a brief period had been a non-exec director at Movebubble, arriving in October 2020 but leaving in December.

At the zenith of its activity the platform listed 26,000 properties in London and Manchester and, only a year ago, won ‘Start-up of the Year’ gong from a tech website.

Companies House reveals that Movebubble Ltd was nearly struck off early this month for late submission of paperwork. Also, Rajesh Shah, who is a senior director at BTR giant Quintain which invested in Movebubble at one point, resigned as a director last week.

The Neg has approached both Movebubble and Quintain for comment.