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‘Offer management’ platform to launch in UK co-founded by star agent

Offr enables agents, vendors and those making offers on a property to communicate via a common platform, helping reduce fall-throughs by 50%.

Nigel Lewis

proptech

The Negotiator has been shown a new proptech platform that claims to revolutionise how prospective buyers make offers on a property for sale.

Called Offr, it’s a tech platform that enables estate agents to move the offer management process online and help them and vendors control and understand more about each offer and who’s making it and how prepared each buyer is to move to SSTC.

It’s a white-labelled widget that sits on an agent’s website and enables approved buyers to make an offer at the click of a button. This, it is claimed, will drive more traffic and buyer engagement to agents’ site.

Created by an Irish tech firm which has recently moved its operations to London, it is backed by an investment of €1 million from two Irish banks and has been in Beta mode for the past 18 months.

Its launch is being spearheaded by Phil Farrell (pictured, above), who as well as being an estate agent with 27 years’ experience, is well known in Ireland for his property column in the Irish Independent.

Ten million

“We estimate that there are eight to ten million offers made in the UK every year on residential property but no one is capturing this information and managing it,” he says.

“To speed up the house buying and selling process it’s essential to bring information about potential buyers into the offer process earlier and, among many things, weed out the tyre kickers.”

The platform came out of auction house Allsop’s move into Ireland during the late noughties and the online tech developed by the company to handle online bids for properties. Its former director in Ireland and until recently the force behind BidX1 online auction site, Robert Hoban, is a co-founder with Farrell along with tech guru Niall Dawson.

Offr is due to officially launch in May or June this year in the UK and is already being tried out by several high-profile agents. It plans to charge £300 a month to agents who want to list unlimited number of properties, and an undisclosed per-property charge for those who don’t.

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January 27, 2020

One comment

  1. I must profess a personal interest with Offr, in the sense that two of the directors Phil Farrell and Robert Hoban, were plying me with several pints of Guinness last Friday night in a hostelry in London Bridge. Putting that aside, and unlike Guinness which is said not to travel well across the water, Offr certainly does.

    I have been following the fortunes of this company for some time, and as a person very much in the know as my day time job is networking with all sectors of the proptech and real estate industry, meeting CEO’s, project managers, data scientists, captains of the finance, banking and legal industry and more, I love it when someone gets it right.

    And Robert, Phil have definitely got it right, with their offering – Offr.

    In between the pints Phil and Robert said their biggest problem was articulating what their service was. I suggested it was ‘two taps – Offr’ – meaning with two taps of your smart phone you can offer on a property, this is an integral part of their service. It also suggests that the service is instantaneous and seamless, the modern consumers touchstone.

    Phil rightly said, two taps seems more like Michael Flatterley, but after another pint of the black stuff I said well what is the Offr proposition?

    With an Irish gleam in his eye, Phil then said that Offr is a service for agents that runs alongside their existing business, it enhances it, and gives transparency to all parties, with a dashboard system that allows all stakeholders to be super connected.

    They went on to say that they had looked at the slow model of real estate, all the sticking points, and they had digitally engineered a better model with the buyer and the vendor at the centre of all things. Also, a transparent and time specific way of agreeing sales, still on the traditional private treaty basis. But, where buyer’s are pre-qualified before they offer (Offr), and at point of sale, within seconds the memo of sale can be produced, and all parties who offered and were unsuccesful would be instantly told.

    Then the proptech in the Offr solution really kicks off, with all ther stakeholders in the sale, buyer, seller, solicitors, all on a dashboard system able to see in real time the progress of the sale.

    For me – though I am no longer selling property, if I was I would use Offr (not the drink talking) because – it works – at point of pitching for the business in front of the vendor the Offr solution will gain vendors, and it will run along the existing way the agent works, it will also support a higher fee.

    So, more instructions, a better listing fee, a quicker sale being agreed and a speedier more transparent route to exchange.

    My advice – look on the Offr website today and get in contact with these two Robert or Phil, they may not buy you a pint, but, they will transform the bottom line of your business for the better.

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