Proptech
News focusing on new technological solutions which create efficiencies and cost-savings for estate and letting agents and the wider residential property industry.
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‘Estate agency branches will soon go the way of the horse-drawn bus’
A leading industry figure has ‘reluctantly’ concluded that the estate agency branch will soon be a quaint part of high street history and that the only conclusion he can draw is that agents will eventually all be self-employed, Purplebricks-style operators. That is the incendiary claim made by high profile Edinburgh agent David Alexander whose company DJ Alexander is in the process of launching a platform, Apropos, to offer agents a way to set up their own letting agency business from home. In a column published this morning in The Scotsman, Alexander claims that the recent acceleration of estate agency closures to almost ten businesses a week at the moment is an augur of things to come. “Respected competitors may disagree with the sentiment that High Street estate agency will go the way of the horse-bus and the traditionalist in me partly wishes they were right. But the facts speak for themselves,” he says. Hub offices The 59-year-old founder of DJ Alexander, which has large ‘hub’ offices in both Glasgow and Edinburgh, says he initially considered creating Apropos into a ‘hybrid’ style app that would include physical branches before realising going completely online is the future. Alexander says that when he…
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Matterport turns a smartphone into 3D capture device
Matterport, has announced that its latest breakthrough, Matterport 3D Capture for Smartphones, will turn consumer smartphones into 3D capture devices.
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Proptech firm launches London Underground advertising blitz
'Risky' adverts are designed to persuade renters to download the tech firm's credit score checking smartphone app.
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Proptech Lettings platform secures £7m from Santander ahead of January launch
Online property management portal Apropos says it has signed up 25 representatives so far to its lettings proptech service ahead of the official launch in January. At that time it is expected that Apropos’ territory owners will cover 70% of London and 45% of the UK. Developed by Edinburgh-based lettings and property management firm DJ Alexander, Apropos has also secured funding worth £7 million ahead of the launch, via Santander. This is the first time that DJ Alexander has sought exterior funding for the portal, which has taken the company several years to develop, and will be rolled out across the UK over the next three years. “We want the Apropos platform to be the place where the best landlords want their properties listed and where tenants know they can trust our service,” says founder David Alexander (left). “We want our partners, our landlords and our tenants to believe in what we do and ensure that we have the best platform combined with locally based property experts creating a platform that changes the way in which letting is delivered.” Richard Mathieson, head of Santander’s Structure Finance division, says: “We have been working with DJ Alexander over the past 10 months…
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Mid West Displays launches innovative display screen
The next generation digital display screen for the estate agency and letting sector has been launched by Mid West Displays...
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£24.3 million MORE funding for proptech lettings platform
The flow of investment cash into proptech continues after rental platform and tech firm Plentific revealed that it has landed a second major round of funding worth £24.3 million. This, together with earlier funding efforts, takes its total funds raised to nearly £30 million. Plentific is based in London and is a tech-based property management platform for landlords that enables them to manage a property’s repairs and maintenance and keep tenants informed about progress. In 2015 Plentific gained considerable exposure when it partnered with Zoopla to enable the portal to offer its users a ‘find a tradesman’ service. But Plentific’s key aim, like many other proptech platforms in the property management marketplace, is to either persuade landlords to use its platform to cut costs and free up time, or use it instead of a letting agent. “It’s a massive market we operate in with very old systems in place,” says co-founder and CEO Cem Savas, pictured, above. “There are long-standing structural barriers that housing companies have to overcome in order to deliver a good tenant experience. “By digitising the supply chain we’re creating a larger, more dynamic market of locally-available tradespeople and removing unnecessary manual processes, significantly improving the tenant…
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New online club plans to revolutionise networking within the property industry
The Eighth Door app will connect agents, developers and other professionals and hopes to be a property-specific alternative to LinkedIn.
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Property people take their place at UK’s ‘tech top table’
James Dearsley and Russell Quirk and several others join Richard Branson, Mary Portas and Stephen Fry in the annual list of those with the most clout in tech.
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Is this the UK’s most successful proptech platform?
Proptech has many stars but relatively unknown firm GuestReady has revealed that it now has over £900 million in property assets under management within 14 cities including London.
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Lavanda raises $5m investment to legitimise Airbnb-style rentals
Lavanda, a technology platform enabling institutional real estate portfolios to profit legitimately from Airbnb-style homestays and homesharing, has secured a $5 million Series-A round led by Henley Ventures.
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