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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Major UK agent signs up to rent empty properties via Airbnb
Franchised agency network Hunters is piloting a scheme in Manchester that will enable its landlord and vendor clients to rent out their properties via Airbnb and other short-term rental sites. The first properties to be offered for short-term rent are within Bracken House (pictured, right), a development of apartments within the city centre. The new service is a partnership with Lavanda.co.uk, which has launched an agent version of its property management service to facilitate the deal. Hunters says the Manchester pilot has been a “great success” and will be rolled across the national Hunters 200-branch network over the next 12 months. Properties must be let out for a minimum of two nights and will be managed by Lavanda including a furnishing service for empty properties, tenant vetting, hotel-style housekeeping, face-to-face check-ins and a 24-7 concierge service. Lavanda will also advertise the properties, it says, via all the major short-term rental websites including Airbnb, Booking.com, HomeAway and Expedia. “Much to the frustration of vendors, the recent slow sales market has led to swathes of prime property sitting empty,” says Guy Westlake, CEO of Lavanda (pictured, left). “This has not only resulted in landlords suffering a significant loss of income, but [for…
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Proptech firm claims it can help agents banish email ‘tyre kickers’
Estate agents will soon be able to automatically sort out the useful portal email leads from the tyre kickers following the launch of a new proptech service. OneDome says its OneLead product will enable estate agents to respond instantly to any buyer or vendor email enquiry coming in from Rightmove, Zoopla or OnTheMarket and work out which kind of customer they are and then direct them to either a valuations or viewings booking page. The system generates an automated reply answer to an email enquiry depending on the information within it, helping agents answer them more quickly and filtering out the ‘chaff from the wheat’, it is claimed. OneDome says Rightmove’s own figures show that 65% of vendor and buyer leads from the portals arrive out of hours. “Consumer expectations are greater than ever and they expect instant gratification,” says OneDome CEO Babek Ismayil (pictured, left). “When sending an enquiry form from a portal, buyers often get a slow response or no reply at all because agents find that many of the enquiries they get from portals are low quality, or worse, spam. “This discourages agents from responding and unfortunately, this means that high quality enquiries are missed.” The company…
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Lettingweb leads Model Tenancy Agreement ‘2.0’
Lettingweb, the independent marketplace for rental properties in Scotland, is spearheading the use of a new standard tenancy agreement which builds on the Government’s ambitions to create an effective, secure and stable private rented sector.
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Does yesterday’s Goodlord staff clearout include its CEO?
Richard White, the founder and CEO of online rental viewings and digital tenancy processing company Goodlord is about to leave the company, it has been reported. The news comes just a day after it was announced Goodlord has let 40 of its employees go, reducing its headcount down to 96 from 136. 31-year-old Richard, who is both a director and company secretary of Oh Goodlord Ltd, started out in the property industry as a Foxtons negotiator before moving to lettings company Capital Living. He then founded and helped raise £2m in start-up cash plus a further £7.2 million in March last year. At the time Richard told The Negotiator that he would be spending the extra cash on expanding the company’s headcount, and that Goodlord had signed up several big names to its service including Strutt & Parker. The company currently says its has 365,000 landlords and tenants who have used its service, and processed 151,000 tenancies. But Goodlord’s management would appear to have taken it in a new direction following the reduction in staff this week. Richard White’s reported imminent departure has been predicted on website Techcrunch, which also says Goodlord’s CTO Andrew Done may also be leaving the…
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RICS launches PropTech insight paper
RICS has published an insight paper on tech revolution and the future of residential property, examining what PropTech means for the residential property sector...
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London renting app begins advertising push following rebrand of ‘confusing’ logo
London renting app Movebubble’s first poster advertising campaign has begun within the capital’s tube system, two years after it launched with great fanfare backed by over two million pounds of venture capital cash. The app has created three advertisements which also coincide with a rebrand, designed to help renters understand that its service helps them navigate the renting journey, something it’s previous ‘bubble’ logo didn’t, the company’s own research recently discovered. “Movebubble strives to be with renters from the start of their rental journey, all the way through to the day they move in,” says Movebubble’s CEO Aidan Rushby, before starting up the company worked for a Bristol lettings firm (pictured, left). “The symbol and logo represent the journey a renter goes through to discover the right property. Movebubble gets you to the finishing line and is by your side through all the ups and downs.” Renting app Aidan also recently said he wanted to make renting a home as easy as “ordering a pizza”, and has gone some way towards achieving it already. Tenants can browse and book a property viewing with a ‘few taps’, make an offer on a property, pay any holding fees and complete the paperwork…
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Leading payments platform says it is “hard to believe” rent isn’t recorded by credit agencies
Rental payments platform PayProp has called for rental histories to be added to tenants’ credit scores which is says will help re-ignite the first-time buyer property market. The company, which started in South Africa but now has a substantial presence in the UK and elsewhere, says enabling tenants to use their regular rent payments to improve their credit scores would help more first time buyers get on to the property ladder, and also incentivise tenants not to pay their rent late. “Many tenants have been paying rent on time for years, if not decades. The fact that this does not carry the same weight as a mortgage payment is hard to believe,” says Neil Cobbold, CEO of PayProp in the UK (pictured, below). “Thanks to the rapid growth of the private rental sector, more tenants are paying higher rents. Taking cognisance of rent payments would therefore make perfect sense, encouraging the next generation of property buyers. “Recording and counting rent payments towards credit scores is a modern phenomenon and therefore it needs a modern solution,” Credit reference agencies and lenders in the UK are not required to take rental payment into account when ‘scoring’ borrowers, and only Experian does so…
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2018: make or break for PropTech
The next twelve months are likely to be a tipping point for technology in the housing market, say the leading PropTech figures.
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New app will ‘revolutionise’ tenant application process
A new digital product, Vouch, has been created to ‘revolutionise the tenant application process for letting agents’.
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First ever Airbnb-branded apartment block to launch
The march of Airbnb towards being a fully-fledged property company took a step further towards reality this week after it was revealed that the home-sharing platform is to spend $200 million launching a series of Airbnb apartment blocks. The initial development, which is due to open before the end of March next year, will be the first Airbnb-branded building in the world and is to be in Kissimmee, Florida. Within the building, tenants will be encouraged to rent out their homes via the home-sharing website, and in return receive aparthotel-style services to help manage each Airbnb booking. The $20m, 423-apartment building – which is under construction – is Airbnb’s attempt to get around the problems it has faced when, around the world and particularly in the UK, apartment block owners and tenants have railed against the downsides of home sharing. Airbnb apartment This includes helping push up local rents by eating up the long-term rental market, contravening local property laws, undermining local communities and that the people who rent out Airbnb apartments tend to be noisy and transient holiday makers. The Kissimmee apartment block is owned by Airbnb’s partner in the venture, the Newgard Development Group, while the concept is…
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